Readings:

I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled… and framed and adopted that Declaration of Independence. I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved that Independence. I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the motherland; but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time.

It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men. This is a sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world, if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.

– Abraham Lincoln
impromptu remarks at Independence Hall
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – February 22, 1861

 

You said to me “The greatness of one’s country is beyond price. Everything is good that contributes to its greatness, and in a world where everything has lost its meaning, those lucky few, who, like us young Germans, are fortunate enough to find a meaning in the destiny of our country, must sacrifice everything else to it.” I loved you then, but at this point we diverged. “No,” I told you, “Everything must not be subordinated to a single end. There are means which cannot be excused, and I should like to be able to love my country, and still love justice.” You retorted “Well you don’t love your country.”

That was five years ago. We have been separated since then. And I can tell you that not a single day has passed during those long years without my remembering your remark “You don’t love your country.” No, I didn’t love my country, if pointing out what is unjust about what one loves amounts to not loving. No, I didn’t love my country, if insisting that what one loves measure up to the finest image you have of her amounts to not loving, then I do not love my country….

What is spirit? We know its opposite, which is murder. What is man? There I stop you, for we know. Man is that force which ultimately cancels all tyrants and gods. He is the force of evidence….

-Albert Camus, First Letter to a German Friend (July 1943)

 

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
So much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those who,
age after age,
perversely, with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.

– Adrienne Rich, “Natural Resources” (excerpt)

 

Sermon: The Soul of the Nation
Rev. Dan Schatz

Sometimes we face a moral imperative. Maybe there’s an injustice which has lingered for too long, or wisdom and heart have finally overcome our hesitance to speak out and be upsetting. It happened in this country when religious people of conscience – among them many Universalists and Unitarians – at last came to the realization that the ownership of human beings was a scourge against everything holy, and had to be abolished. So we spoke up. And we spoke up again – or many of us did – in the struggle for the rights of women to vote and hold public office.

Religious movements have always been deeply embedded in the work for justice. In the 1950s and 60s the civil rights movement found its strongest base in the African American churches of the South –as well as liberal religions like Unitarian Universalism. In the decades since we have organized, campaigned, demonstrated, and labored for the right to choose, the right to marry – won ten years ago this week – the right to exist as a transgender, non-binary, or gender non-conforming person, and we’re still doing it. At last week’s General Assembly we were implored to be as obnoxiously loud and as obnoxiously religious as Unitarian Universalists can be, using our position as people of faith to make change. (I know it’s easier for most of us to be obnoxiously loud than obnoxiously religious, but it does make a difference.)It’s not all that we exist for, but it’s part of our work – religion exists in part to lift the human conscience so that the values of justice, love, and human dignity can be realized in this world.

Of course religion hasn’t always met the moment.

During World War II, in Germany, some religious leaders resisted the Fascists but others found ways to encourage them, grounding Fascist ideals in a Christian Nationalist ideology. In this country, the larger faith community was pretty much silent when Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps. As far as I can tell, a few Quakers and one Unitarian church spoke up, but nobody listened very much. And twenty years ago, when the government embraced torture and indefinite imprisonment in a so called “war on terror,” many religious voices spoke up, but too many did not, for far too long.

Today the blows to human rights and civil liberties have been fast and brutal, and that is intentional. It is designed to overwhelm us, so that our voices of conscience will be lost in all the noise.

At the same time, leaders cloak themselves in the language of freedom and love of country, and those are good values when they mean something. But freedom isn’t freedom if it’s only for some. If that word doesn’t apply to a transgender child and their family, or to a pregnant woman enduring the violence of forced pregnancy and childbirth, or to a college student speaking up for what they believe, whether they’re right or wrong about it – if “freedom” doesn’t apply to these, it isn’t really freedom at all. It’s everything that stands against freedom. If love of country means hiding the truth about our history from school children or visitors to National Parks and museums, then it isn’t love of country; it’s just lies.

There’s an Aesop’s fable about a horse and a stag. The two animals had lived together in the forest for many years, but argued over who had the rights to graze the finest grass or drink from the clearest waters. Over time their animosity became hatred, and the hatred warfare, and then the warfare became deadly.

The horse knew he could never defeat the stag as things stood, so he went to the man and said, “Will you help me defeat the stag? One day I will return your favor.” The man agreed, and told the horse, “I will only be able to help you if you allow me to put this bridle on your head and saddle on your back.” And the horse willingly lowered his head.

It didn’t take long for the man on horseback to overcome the stag, who fled at once before the hunter. The horse was ecstatic, saying, “Thank you, my friend! I will not forget your kindness – and one day I will return the favor. Now, will you remove this saddle and bridle?” But the man only laughed, kicking the horse in the sides and saying “Giddyap! You’re wearing my saddle and bridle now – if you didn’t want to belong to me you should never have put them on.” The sad and suffering horse had to serve the man for the rest of his days.

When we accept injustice in the name of justice or comfort, or safety, we put on the saddle and the bridle. When leaders in Congress enable and condone corruption and prejudice, because they’re afraid of being targeted in a primary, they wear the saddle and the bridle. When universities give up their academic freedom in the false hope of appeasement, and when major media bow to false narratives, they wear it too. And that’s where too many leaders who should know better are today.

But in so many ways, the struggle of this moment is our struggle as Unitarian Universalists. Read the Constitution, and you will find that the liberties and protections outlined in the Bill of Rights come from the same stream of thought that led so many of this country’s early leaders to embrace Unitarianism and Universalism. And yes, there were flaws from the beginning – many of the same people who wrote about freedom and individual liberty also supported slavery, or decried it while profiting from it. Some of them, including some of the Unitarians like Thomas Jefferson, knew it was wrong and did it in anyway.

But the ideas were greater than the people. The ideas took root and grew. And this is important – the rights in the Constitution are meaningful not because they grant some special privilege to American citizens, but because they define the basic human rights of all people. And just as Abraham Lincoln saw in the Declaration of Independence a promise for every nation, I believe our constitutional protections have to apply equally to every person, regardless of citizenship status, race, religion, gender identity, guilt or innocence. They apply to everyone or they mean nothing. And if we accept the bridle and saddle of compromise to those rights, we will lose both our freedom and our integrity.

The Declaration of independence speaks of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Where is the commitment to that ideal in policies that attack human beings based on their gender identity or sexual orientation? Where is that ideal in a Supreme Court decision that denies the right of young transgender people to exist, and that we know will lead to death, oppression, and misery? Just yesterday in this sanctuary we honored two young lives ended far too soon, in a world that refused to accept them for who they were. And don’t let them fool you – the question is not whether transgender kids should be protected because they are transgender. The question is whether transgender kids should be protected because they are human beings. And right now, our country is failing it’s most basic test.

Our First Amendment speaks of the freedom of speech and the right to assemble. Yet the so-called Justice Department investigates peaceful demonstrators, equating dissent with betrayal. Universities where students have organized against the destruction of the people of Gaza have become targets for government crackdowns, and students are being deported or detained over mildly worded op/eds in campus papers.

Our Fifth Amendment tells us that no person – it doesn’t say citizen, but person – shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” That’s what it says, but masked government agents, showing no identification, are ripping people from the streets and deporting them to countries where they have no ties, or placing them in concentration camps in those countries, with no hearing, trial, or reasonable possibility of appeal. And the Supreme Court has now tacitly approved that kind of deportation. They didn’t rule that it was legal or Constitutional – they just let it happen anyway. The rhetoric is that these people are dangerous criminals. But whole point of due process is that you don’t get to call someone a criminal or treat them as a criminal until after they have been convicted in a fair trial. Without due process, any one of us could be taken at any time, with no recourse – because they don’t have to prove we are who we say we are. At the moment, the more privileged among us are temporarily safe, but that’s no way to run a country.

And on Friday, the Supreme Court again eroded the rule of law, in the process allowing the Administration to violate the plainest language of the Constitution on who is a citizen, and curtailing the ability of courts to do anything to stop them further and grosser violations of human rights. Again, they didn’t rule it was legal – they just let them do it anyway. And that’s only one of several damaging decisions they made this week.

We are moving in the wrong direction.

Our religious forbear, the Rev. Ralph Waldo Emerson, taught that the purpose of life is to grow a soul. I believe that part of that process is becoming truer and truer to our core values as we go through time.

How will our nation grow our collective soul? How will we turn from this moment, learn from this moment, and embrace the values that could make American what we ought to be?

And I know that some people might hear these words and consider me unpatriotic – consider us unpatriotic. “Those UUs, they don’t love America.” Nothing could be farther from truth. The truth is that a nation, at its best, is an ideal, and if we sacrifice the ideal of America in the name America, then we have nothing left. In the words of Camus, “I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.”

At this time, more than ever before – when inhumanity comes cloaked in the language of God and country – we need to raise our voices as people of faith. We Unitarian Universalists who value democracy, human worthiness, equity, justice, who care for the earth and for all people, who proclaim a love centered faith – we need to begin the work of reclaiming the soul of our nation. We need to live our values.

That means speaking for the voiceless, and caring for the poor, the vulnerable, the stranger. It means that when human dignity is denied it is our religious duty to proclaim it. Where freedom is denied it is our spiritual responsibility to create a community in which it is safe to come and be who you are without fear of judgement.

And when our leaders lie, it is our sacred duty to speak the truth, whether it’s convenient for us or not. That part is important, because this is not about getting to the end result of policies we like by using the tactics that are causing so much damage right now. Our values have to mean something, and they only mean something if we live them. It’s harder sometimes, but it’s what we have to do.

That means that when hate burgeons all around us, we need to speak and act with love. Determination, yes, the power of our convictions, yes, hatred never. I know, I know. We going to feel what we feel. It’s natural and human. I’m not talking about our feelings. I’m talking about the way we act and what we put out into the world. We cannot reclaim and grow the soul of the nation if we leave love behind.

You might feel helpless or hopeless. I do too, a lot of days. I want to do something; I don’t know what to do. It’s all so much and so hard, and it’s true – every one of us needs to be able to step away sometimes, to attend to our own lives and needs sometimes, to take a break and just bask in joy sometimes. The most effective activists know this. That’s how they stay in the struggle so long. We can’t do it all, and we can’t do it always.

But we can do some.

And however we feel, we are not helpless, we are not hopeless, and you are not alone. We are with you. We are with each other. And we can do something. Remember that the smallest act you contribute is part of a far greater whole. Without all the tiny bits, nothing ever gets built.

So what can we do? We’ve called our Senators and Members of Congress, and we’ll keep that up, even though sometimes it feels like we’re talking to a brick answering machine. We can also pay attention to what’s happening on the state and local levels. At the UU General Assembly’s keynote lecture, Imara Jones reminded us that most State Representatives and Senators rarely get calls from anybody, so if a dedicated group of us make calls and lobby, and advocate, they will pay attention, and it could be enough to swing an important vote. When the right to bodily autonomy, to identity, to freedom, to basic civil liberties is on the line, that’s important work. We can keep on demonstrating. The protests make a difference, and especially when there are some people for whom it is not safe to protest, our public demonstrations send a message of solidarity, love, and support.

We can work together as a congregation. After social hour today, some of us will meet back here, in this room, and talk about our priorities and passions, and the ways we can have an impact together.

And we can care for each other. We can hold each other through the trauma and the fear, remind each other that beauty and joy and love and laughter are still real, that ideals still mean something, that as hard as it might seem in this moment, we can reclaim the values of dignity and equity and justice, of interdependence and generosity and pluralism and love. We can lay the groundwork for healing and growing and creating together the interdependent community that this country must become. We can, and we will, redeem the soul of our nation.

Sorrow will one day turn to joy.
All that breaks the heart and oppresses the soul
will one day give place to peace and understanding
and everyone will be free.

– Paul Robeson