Bob Lonsbury thinks I'm clueless. He wouldn't talk with me about God. That's the report I had from a parishioner last week about WHAM's talk show host responding to words of mine quoted in last Monday morning's Democrat and Chronicle. In responding to a reporter's inquiry about my reactions to the horror of September 11 and its aftermath, I said (more or less): "I think of this in terms of our basic lack of understanding of other faith traditions. Americans are insular. Our people have had to do a radical opening up as to why people hate us. We need to understand why we are the targets of terrorists. As Unitarian Universalists we look at the world as one place. We think of God as God of all the nations. To single us out is potentially dangerous. We are not uniquely blessed by God."[1]
Bob Lonsbury is a very pious and conservative man. I know because I listened to him for nearly an hour at a meeting of the Rochester Interfaith Forum a few years ago, called because our group was not happy with his work as the religion correspondent for the D & C. He was subsequently fired, only to be hired by our 50,000 watt clear channel station to do the same thing on a talk show - a run-up to Rush Limbaugh.
In any case, September 11 and its aftermath has caused me to re-examine my political convictions. Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once said politics was the place where technical and ethical issues meet - and I would add religion to that complex mix. My ministry among you has been marked by an attempt to apply my religious principles to every dimension of human life as I understand religion to be that core of meanings, values and convictions out of which we live our lives. It has at times been a hazardous enterprise.
A good way to examine those convictions is to seek their source. I think the seeds of my political activism were sown by my mother and father, though they cannot be held responsible for my often controversial expression of those convictions. My mother, whom I call the "saint of Baptist Hill," was forever doing something for someone else - the most unselfish person I have ever known. She often took me along to visit the sick and shut-in. I didn't know then, but I do know now, that her gospel was one of works: "faith without works is dead." We are on earth to help other people.
To a much lesser degree I have absorbed that teaching. I'm afraid, however, that probably there are times I embarrass her by my public pronouncements, since she lives in a very conservative community. She has never complained, but, nevertheless, I wonder.
My father operated in a much less gregarious way. He was the person in the neighborhood to whom people turned instead of a plumber, an electrician or a carpenter. He was Mr. Fix It. I didn't know what plumbers and electricians and carpenters really were until I had grown up, because he fixed everything - very quietly. From him, unconsciously I am sure, I learned that one must have a set of skills to help people, and that there isn't a problem that can't be solved.
I spent much of my childhood in those "good old days" of the 1950's when life in a small town was innocent and good. My Universalist upbringing taught me that all people are virtuous and the world is a wonderful place to be. God was a loving Creator with whom I spoke on a regular basis. Life was good.
This positive but rather naïve attitude carried on until college, when a friend and I broke up an impending fight between our fraternity house and the one across the street at St. Lawrence University. Why would perfectly decent guys, many from both houses football teammates, behave so stupidly? I should have seen that as a clue to human nature and the inevitability of conflict in the world.
When I entered seminary, I was asked to take on a portfolio promoting the integration of the St. Lawrence campus because there were at that time no students of color. But I was too busy. Then my ethics professor thought it would be instructive to go on a field trip to make real our unit on racism; and so in 1961, at 24, I marched in my first demonstration - a brush-cut red-head protesting the racially discriminatory policy of Woolworth stores during the days of the sit-ins. It was an innocuous beginning, but it paved the way for many marches in the years to come.
Race was still a rather abstract issue until my first congregation in Cleveland, where I was Assistant Minister. I drew the ire of some members when I preached about integrated housing in suburban Shaker Heights, where the church was located. When I told the congregation I was going to the 1963 March on Washington, one church pillar warned me it would split the church. But when I returned and preached on why I went, he was the first to shake my hand and congratulate me. I learned that it was possible to agree to disagree agreeably in our congregations, and more exciting, even to be a vehicle for changing minds - a heady thought.
But all was not sanguine in Shaker Heights. During one annual meeting a very conservative block in the church verbally attacked me after my report: They said I had denied a woman's Republican group the right to meet there and had brought in a Communist cell group. I had no role in building usage but had helped to arrange a meeting for the local National Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy - a staunchly anti-communist peace group. I was also charged with corrupting the morals of youth by taking them to the inner city settlement house to which we contributed used toys for a Christmas fair. I was guilty - guilty of taking those privileged suburban kids to the ghetto, but I like to think I nourished their moral growth. My heart pounded as I was attacked, but I survived with the support of the Senior Minister and many members of the congregation. Social action could get one in trouble. But I now found it indispensable to my ministry.
Deciding I needed to hone my skills, I spent a year at the University of Chicago Divinity School, seeking a Ph. D. in social ethics. Selma interrupted that academic side-trip and I plunged back into the ministry at the First Unitarian Church of Ithaca from 1965-1970, a tumultuous time. I tried to mediate between town and gown, more often than not taking the side of the radical students and professors rather than the somewhat more conservative townspeople.
My liberalism was challenged by the radicalism of my chaplain colleague at Cornell, Father Daniel Berrigan, who put his body on the line, while I maintained a much more secure position behind the pulpit. He showed me the potential danger of my middle-classness - the more one has, and the more one has to protect, the more conservative one tends to be. I have struggled with that tension ever since.
And so, for nearly 32 years I have preached the social gospel here - as one vital part of my doctrine of the church, along with spiritual, educational and pastoral dimensions. I have tried to keep these four dimensions in balance, but I know I have not been able to please all of you all the time - or even very many of you some of the time. I have tried in preaching and acting to demonstrate the seamless nature of the religious life: our spiritual core of gratitude for being overflows into our lives.
During this time I have had some tough and tender experiences. I remember when we had an after-church meeting to debate making this church a sanctuary for Nicaraguan refugees; I was declared out of order for trying to make one last persuasive point before the vote. I was on the losing side after I refused my war taxes during the Vietnam War and the congregation decided not to withhold its telephone tax.
Now you know why I have needed - why all activists need - a patron saint of lost causes, because if one is serious about changing the world, one has to learn to lose - a lot. And so St. Jude - one of the apostles, brother of Jesus - is that patron saint to whom I occasionally repair. And just to be gender inclusive, there is also St. Rita, a 15th century nun who is patroness of impossible cases. As Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker movement once wisely said, "Our task is not to be victorious - our task is to be faithful." That I have tried to be.
On the other hand, there has also been the sweet taste of success. One Saturday, upon returning from out of town, I found a note in my mailbox calling my attention to the refusal of the Chamber of Commerce to allow the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley to use its Great Hall for a 10th anniversary celebration. We were scheduled to use that same space later for our upcoming canvass dinner. Usually I consult lay leadership in such matters, but there was no time, and so the following day I told the congregation I would urge the Board of Trustees that Tuesday to cancel our dinner at the Chamber in protest. The congregation applauded and the Board agreed. It was one of our finest hours. Times like that remind me that, like the turtle, I must occasionally stick my neck out.
My more recent social action work has focused on economic justice, which I take to be the Achilles Heel of Unitarian Universalists. Can a movement whose people have generally benefited from the status quo bring itself to criticize the very institutions which have treated us so well? My theology of relinquishment has navigated some rough waters as you and I have struggled with our variant views of economic justice over the years.
I have generally considered myself a "liberal" in my moral and political stances, but I have increasingly come to be suspicious of any label. Humor often shows how ridiculous are the labels we pin on one another. The "liberal" historian Arthur Schlesinger once said, "A conservative has been defined as a man who has grown fond of the order which liberals have forced on him."[2]
Columnist Sydney Harris once described the distinction between a conservative and a liberal: a conservative tosses a 25-foot rope to persons drowning 50 feet from shore and encourages them to swim the other half for the good of their character. A liberal, on the other hand, throws a 50-foot rope to persons drowning 25 feet from shore and then lets go of the other end and walks away to do another good deed.
I have always loved the cartoon in which two prosperous men are talking at the club. One says to the other: "The trouble with centrists is they're too damn far to the left." From another perspective, one could say that they're also too far to the right.
In The Devil's Dictionary Ambrose Beirce's defined a conservative as "a statesman (sic) who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the liberal who wishes to replace them with others."[3]
Poet Robert Frost once said that "I never dared be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old." I've had almost the opposite experience. Very conservative when I was young, I have in many ways become much more radical as I have gotten older - though that radicalism has been often tempered by a heavy dose of pragmatism.
I have sometimes hesitated to call myself a liberal - the pejorative adjectives "knee-jerk" and "bleeding heart" come to mind. And while we are a liberal religious movement, there are political and economic conservatives among us. So I have used euphemisms like "progressive pragmatist" and other such shibboleths. But I am really not ashamed to be a liberal. The word liberal comes from the Latin "liberalis," pertaining to a free person, one marked by generosity, altruism, bounteousness, openhandedness; broad-minded, open-minded, favorable to changes and reforms tending in the direction of democracy." That hardly seems sinful! And so, to that extent I am an unrepentant liberal.
I have, however, learned something of the shortcomings of liberalism as a political philosophy with its overly-optimistic view. My concept of human nature has been chastised by history - particularly the events of September 11. Naively I thought human nature to be essentially good; but over the years I have learned that human nature is a complex mixture of good and evil. My natural optimism about human ability to change the world has been disciplined. President Bush would rid the world of evil if we can believe his grandiose rhetoric. I would simply contribute the stubborn ounces of my weight in an effort to repair a broken world.
I have learned that the world is much more ambiguous than I had thought. Issues that once were black and white and quite clear, have become muddied. On civil rights in the 1960's and Vietnam in the 1970's, I thought the issues were clear, and I could embrace the civil rights movement and the anti-war movements with enthusiasm. But the events of the last month underscore the incredible complexity of reality - the difficulty of fashioning a peace movement critique of our nation's response to terrorism. I despair of those left or right who claim to have virtue on their side alone. If the answer is blowing in the wind, then that wind keeps changing direction, velocity and temperature. Political humility has come at considerable cost.
I have also learned to critique claims of both liberals and conservatives. Conservatives who would keep government "off our backs" are often those who would intrude government into our bedrooms in their anti-abortion stance. The conservative Ronald Reagan built bigger government and a larger national debt; the liberal Bill Clinton downsized government and balanced the budget. The conservative Richard Nixon recognized China. Liberals who rejected Bill Clinton's welfare reform must admit it has had the salutary effect of motivating many into the work force, though its champions must be shown its many flaws. I think back to my erroneous opposition to President Nixon's Family Assistance Plan in the 1970's. It basically provided a guaranteed annual income advocated by conservative economist Milton Friedman, but I and many liberals opposed it because the floor was too low. I did not realize that if that principle could be established under a conservative president, the floor could be raised. I had made a tactical error; sweeping welfare reform of a much more conservative character was the price I and other liberals have paid.
I have learned there is much of the traditional religious impulse in me. The Hebrew prophets dropped the plumbline of justice over the nation and the nations and so I have tried to imagine a "God's eye view of the world" as I make political judgments. That theological perspective informed the words which so disturbed Bob Lonsbury. Jesus' words in the Gospel of Matthew resonate: "Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you have done it unto me." I have come to agree with the Roman Catholic bishops of the United States in having a "preferential option for the poor," working to critique wealth and its corruptions, to end poverty and its corruptions.
In the last analysis I have tried to understand what Bill Moyers calls "the importance of being a public nuisance," questioning the conventional wisdom and the status quo - trying to live out the spirit of those prophets of old.
When I am discouraged, when I question my social action role, when I am in doubt, and these times are frequent, I go to the words of our great 19th century prophet Theodore Parker. Parker was something of a trouble-maker as he questioned wealth and privilege; he urged his ministerial colleagues to "meddle with the state's business," and he called for the "church militant." In his last letter to his congregation he wrote words which abide with me - and perhaps will abide with you.
"So I have not only preached on the private virtues, which are and ought to be the most constant theme of all pulpits, but likewise on the public virtues that are also indispensable to the general welfare. . . . I have preached many political sermons. . . .[4] No doubt I have often wounded the feelings of many of you. Pardon me, my friends. If I live long I doubt not that I shall do so again and again. You never made me your minister to flatter, or merely to please, but to instruct and serve."[5]
Well, that is my confession. I have tried to instruct and serve. Bob Lonsbury thinks I'm clueless. You'll have to make up your own mind.
In the words of W. H. Auden,
"O teach us to outgrow our madness.
Ruffle the perfect manners of the frozen heart,
And once again compel it to be awkward and alive...
Clear from the head the masses of impressive rubbish;
Rally the lost and trembling forces of the will,
Gather them up and let them loose upon the earth."[6]
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