ARE WE DESTROYING DEMOCRACY IN ORDER TO SAVE IT?

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday October 24, 2004


[extemporaneous intro: the New England tradition of the "Election Sermon"]

I love voting here in Carlisle. I love walking out my front door, and strolling past the church and across the town common to the Town Hall. I love standing in line and chatting pleasantly with my neighbors while I wait to be checked in and receive my ballot. I love marking my traditional paper ballot "the old fashioned way" -- by hand, with a pen or pencil -- and knowing that once the crank has turned and the ballot box bell has rung I can count on my ballot being counted promptly and accurately by someone I know and trust and who lives in my neighborhood. It's about the most civil exercise of my civic duty that I've ever experienced anywhere. The perfect paradigm of participatory democracy: one person, one vote, where every vote counts, and every vote is counted. It just doesn't get any better than this.

When I lived in Oregon, we used to vote by mail. Our ballots would arrive at the house well in advance of the election, along with a thick booklet (sometimes even two booklets) published by the Secretary of State, in which anyone with $100 could purchase space to make a statement for or against a particular candidate or ballot measure (of which there were typically dozens). And at some point we would generally sit down around the kitchen table and work our way through this booklet, one issue and candidate at a time -- the kids too, even before they turned 18 -- and figure out how we each felt about things, before individually marking our ballots and sealing them in their return envelopes. I don't know whether this was really how the process was intended to work (and I can certainly see how in some contexts it might provide ample opportunity for electoral mischief like fraud, coercion, or abuse). But it worked pretty well for my family. And neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night prevented us from voting faithfully in every election.

It seems as though every election year we are told that THIS election is "the most important election of our lifetimes." And no doubt this is true...until the next one. As an historian I sometimes wonder about what specific moment or incident the historians of the future will point to and say: That was it, the ‘Tipping Point,' after which the United States of America ceased to be what it had been before, and became something else instead. None of us can really see, or say with any certainty, what that momentous event might be at the moment it happens to us. We like to think of America as the greatest Democratic Republic the world had ever known, the leader of the free world, one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all...and sometimes it's difficult for many of us to imagine that it ever was or ever will be any different.

History is an abstraction. The past is something that doesn't really concern us any more.. It's behind us, it's "history." And the future? We create our own future out of the decisions and the actions we make and take today. I can say this, though, about the history of the here and now. Whatever episode those future historians choose to single out to characterize our moment in history, it will be something emblematic of a much larger and more gradual change, rather than the result a single incident or decision.

Obviously, the judgment of history is not the only thing at stake in any given election. In fact, it's probably the least of our concerns. There are real life, real world consequences which flow from the decisions we make as an electorate about the people who will lead us and the policies they pursue. But sometimes it's important to consider that larger, historical perspective, and to remind ourselves that we have an interest, not only in the outcome of this election, but also in the integrity of our electoral process itself.

And it's not simply that good process leads to good decisions... which indeed it generally does. But good process also contributes to both the credibility and the legitimacy of those decisions. If we are convinced, for example, that the outcome of an election was both free and fair, even if we aren't especially happy about the results, it is easier for the losers to be persuaded by the winners to go along with the decision. But when the goal becomes Win at Any Price, or when the results are suspect and the process lacks transparency, there can never really be a convincing victory. The conflict simply moves to other arenas, and our entire society becomes weaker as a result.

These are basic lessons of history. They seem so simple and obvious when viewed objectively from a distance, yet for some inexplicable reason human beings have historically chosen to ignore them, again and again and again. Politicians obviously have a strong interest in defeating their opponents, and thus increasing their own power and influence. But if their real power and influence are in fact diminished by a victory which lacks credibility and legitimacy, what have they actually gained?

Thus all politicians, and all citizens really, share a common interest in a political system where both the winners and the losers are equally committed to and satisfied with the fairness of the process. No system is perfect. But when the margin of error is greater than the margin of victory, or it is obvious that the process is being unfairly manipulated by one or both sides in order to distort the outcome, everyone suffers and we all become losers.

Likewise, it's important to remember that the problems confronting our society are going to pretty much remain the same regardless of who is elected in November. There may very well be sharp philosophical and ideological differences between the parties and their candidates, but the problems themselves really don't care very much about ideology . Government policies are either going to be effective and make things better, or they are going to be ineffective and make things worse...and GOOD government is government which capable of evaluating its policies based on results, and modifying them accordingly, regardless of ideology.

In this respect, differences in political philosophy are truly significant only to the extent that they articulate different visions of what our society SHOULD be like...visions which reflect different understandings of what is "better" and what is "worse." Yet this is precisely the area in which most contemporary American politicians are most evasive. Instead, they like to talk in vague platitudes about "Freedom" and "Security" and "Family Values" while praising "the American Way of Life" as "the envy of the world." And at the same time they are constantly looking for new opportunities to characterize (or maybe caricature would be a better word) their opponents as dangerous fanatics whose views are "outside the mainstream."

And so we are left to guess at what our country might actually look like if our elected leaders were actually able to get their way, while at the same time taking no small comfort in the fact that, so far at least, politicians have proven remarkably ineffective when it comes to changing significantly any of the things that are truly important to us as a people.

And yet I think it is critically important that we take the time to ask ourselves this question at election time: What would America really look like if this or that particular candidate were actually capable of imposing their vision of society on the rest of us? Would it still be somewhere you would want to live? And if not, why would you possibly want to vote to go there?

Knowing that you all know how I feel about a lot of the political issues now facing our country, I imagine it may be somewhat difficult for some of you to think about these questions without filtering them through that knowledge. But the questions themselves work perfectly well for evaluating any candidate, regardless of where you or they may fall along the ideological spectrum.

So much of our political discourse these days is driven by image and sound bite: memorable slogans, scurrilous attacks, thinly-coded innuendo and outright falsehood. And perhaps it has always been that way; perhaps only our ability to amplify and broadcast our shrill political discourse has improved. Still, we like to imagine that we can actually tell something significant about a candidate's character based on how they appear in a televised debate, or whether we feel like we might enjoy sitting down for a beer with them if for some reason we just so happened to be invited to a backyard Barbecue at their home.

But it's all just an illusion, an image, a fantasy. So as long as we are using our imaginations anyway, why not try imaging what the world would look like if the various candidates actually had their way? Not just based on what they say they'll do (because you know they'll tell us anything to get our vote). But drawn from an overall impression of a candidate's words and actions and past behaviors, the people they surround themselves with (or refuse to be seen with), both their supporters and their critics.

I suspect that most of us engage in this kind of activity anyway when making up our minds about how to vote. But then we vote according to our gut, rather than in comparison to our own vision of society. We need to learn to trust our eyesight as well as our instincts. We need to stop wondering about whether we would want this person to be our neighbor, and start thinking about the kind of neighborhood we would find ourselves living in if all THEIR dreams came true.

A commitment to the integrity of the political process, a pragmatic bias for results, and a vision of society that is compatible with my own core values of diversity, pluralism, and equal protection under the law are probably the three most important criteria I use when evaluating candidates and deciding how to cast my vote. And yet there's another factor which is never really far from my mind, and which in many ways ties these other three considerations together.

I've long believed that the reason the framers of our Consititution insisted on a strict seperation between Church and State is because they understood, probably even better than we do today, the intimate link between religion and politics in the lives of most individuals. Religious belief has shaped and animated American political discourse since the earliest days of the Republic, and of course even long before that. Yet within our ingenious system of checks and balances, it was intended that no particular sect or doctrine should ever be allowed to take to itself the power of the State or the authority of Law. Like other competing interests within what was even then a remarkably diverse and regionally-divided nation, the give-and-take of political democracy was expected to moderate extreme opinion and create meaningful compromise.

Politics is the art of the possible. It is the vehicle by which we manage to live together within a community. Religion concerns itself with questions of ultimate meaning and value. In its most literal sense, it is the practice which "binds us again" to power which gives us life and gives life meaning. Religion expresses our obligations to God, to our own spiritual nature, and of course to our neighbors as well. Thus, the mere thought of "compromising" the core tenets of one's faith is a source of shame to the truly faithful -- it is literally "unthinkable."

Yet the ability to compromise, to create consensus and facilitate cooperation, is equally essential to an effective political process which allows people with differing beliefs to live together in the same society. It's not that we are expected to leave our beliefs at the door. We bring them to the table, but then courteously refrain from shoving them down one another's throats. We recognize that different people have different tastes, but that everybody has to eat...and so we attempt to prepare a feast which has something for everyone, and where no one goes hungry.

And that is "politics," within a "democratic republic." Not simply the tyranny of the majority, nor faithful obedience to a "higher law" in defiance of the laws of the community. But a "polity" which protects the integrity of our individual beliefs, and protects as well the integrity of the beliefs of others, while preserving the possibility of compromise and cooperation.

I know it sounds a lot easier than it is.

But the alternative: a society where the strong simply impose their will on the weak, is even more problematic, and ultimately leaves us weaker as a nation, while violating as well that most basic Religious Commandment: To do unto others as we would have others do unto us.



READING:

A Pastoral Letter from the Rev. William G. Sinkford
President, Unitarian Universalist Association

October 2004

Since our congregations opened their doors for the new church year last month, they have been ministering in a deeply divided nation. The United States seems to have vanished beneath the battle lines drawn between blue states and red states, conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans.

Most destructive and divisive in this political campaign is its tone of fear and fundamentalism-the notion that there is only one way to be religious, only one holy scripture worthy of being followed. Only one way to be patriotic. Only one way to be a family. And, sadly, only one way to be an American.

We religious liberals share our pews with those who do not share our theology. Liberal Christian, Jew, humanist, Buddhist, Pagan -- all find a home in our UU congregations. We know pluralism as a blessing, and our lived experience, that our differences need not divide us, is a great gift that we can offer this campaign-scarred nation.

Jason Shelton, a UU minister and director of music at our congregation in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote a wonderful hymn this year. He reminds us that when we stand on the side of love, we embody healing virtues:

The promise of the Spirit
faith, hope, and love abide
And so every soul
is blessed and made whole
The truth in our hearts is our guide.
We are standing on the side of love.

My friends, after the wrenching divisions of this campaign season, we need that blessing and that wholeness. In this spirit, I offer a prayer, in the hope that we may each play a part in the healing we all need:

Spirit of Life and Love,
Be with us now in prayer.
We seek the blessing and wholeness that come
From knowing we are bound to one another.

Let faith, hope and love abide with us.
May we open our hearts, finding there the discipline
To avoid stridency,
Which deepens not understanding
But widens the chasms between us.

May we open our hearts, finding there the courage
To join our hands with other people of faith
With whom we do not always agree,
Knowing that to clasp hands with others is to extend our reach farther
Than we ever could alone.

May we open our hearts, finding there humility,
Knowing that many who disagree with us
Are grounded in a faith
As deep as our own.

May we always acknowledge and honor the humanity
of those with whom we disagree.
May we remember what religion is:
a binding together of that which has been sundered.
For in this remembering, we lay wide the possibilities for
reconciliation and healing.

Amen.

Dear friends, as Americans, there is more that unites us than divides us, and there can be but one common destiny for this nation.

So let us stand purposefully on the side of love. The message of fear has been trumpeted throughout this election season. The message of love is quieter, but it is the antidote to that fear. Let us do what we can to help this quieter message be heard. And let us all do our part to bless and make whole a country wounded by partisan conflict and weary of division.

In faith,

Rev. William G. Sinkford
President, Unitarian Universalist Association