First Parish of Watertown

Sermon “The Sounds of Silence” by Mark W. Harris

First Parish of Watertown - January 24, 2010


Call to Worship from Robert Weston

There might have been other uses for this moment.
There might have been other pleasures;
There might have been rest,
But there is something beyond all this which I must seek.
And except I give it time and attention
It may never come to flower.
It is a yearning for meaning for which the tongue has yet no words.
It is a quest for holiness.
It is a quest for self-forgiveness,
For all the things wherein I have failed myself
In failing others:
The light I have ignored;
The pleas of the spirit, rejected;
The meaning still to be found,
peace in a world of conflict, and still something more.
It is something only sensed in moments of quiet and solitude
Or in the shared meditations of others
Who seek with me.
Perhaps, perhaps it is myself,
Now so buried under the demands and pressures of the world
That it may only be found as I take time
To listen for it and to let it grow.

Reading from Pierre, or, The Ambiguities by Herman Melville

All profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence. What a silence is that with which the pale bride precedes the responsive I will, to the priest's solemn question, Wilt thou have this man for thy husband ? In silence, too, the wedded hands are clasped. Yea, in silence the child Christ was born into the world. Silence is the general consecration of the universe. Silence is the invisible laying on of the Divine Pontiffs hands upon the world. Silence is at once the most harmless and the most awful thing in all nature. It speaks of the reserved Forces of Fate. Silence is the only Voice of our God.

Nor is this so august Silence confined to things simply touching or grand. Like the air, Silence permeates all things, and produces its magical power, as well during that peculiar mood which prevails at a solitary traveler's first setting forth on a journey, as at the unimaginable time when before the world was, Silence brooded on the face of the waters.

' No word was spoken by its inmates, as the coach bearing our young Enthusiast, Pierre, and his mournful party, sped forth through the dim dawn into the deep midnight, which still occupied, unrepulsed, the hearts of the old woods through which the road wound, very shortly after quitting the village.

When first entering the coach, Pierre had pressed his hand upon the cushioned seat to steady his way, some crumpled leaves of paper had met his fingers. He had instinctively clutched them; and the same strange clutching mood of his soul which had prompted that instinctive act, did also prevail in causing him now to retain the crumpled paper in his hand for an hour or more of that wonderful intense silence, which the rapid coach bore through the heart of the general stirless morning silence of the fields and the woods.


Sermon “The Sounds of Silence” Mark W. Harris

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible . . . Indivisible? When do we ever use that word? Except in the context of the pledge of allegiance, I don’t think I have ever said it or written it. What does it seem to mean? The implication would be that we as a people cannot be divided. We are joined as one, and yet the word indivisible, as you might infer, comes from individual. What that implies is that the meaning of individual has changed over the last two centuries. Sara Maitland, who has written A Book of Silence, says until the end of the 17th century, indivisible and individual pretty much meant the same thing, that which cannot be divided, cannot be broken down into smaller units. Indivisible was related to the doctrine of the Trinity, and to marriage - three or two become as one. Whether that imagery resonates with you or not, there is this sense of the individual extending beyond the boundaries of the self. Since 1800 though, thanks to some degree to the Romantic period, individual has increasingly meant unique and separate. In fact, the development of the individual self has become a virtual religion in America, and it plays an important role in the religious orientation of most Unitarian Universalists, too. We are democratic. We are non doctrinal. We call for the free search for truth. Free search has often meant individual search.

And that search has meant that we have held up one use for silence to the detriment of another. That one use is when the individual goes into quiet reflection to consider the most profound issues in order to develop the self. This use of silence give us more profound insights that some of us could create great pieces of literature. Whether you write or not, it is still the idea of silence to fill oneself for self-understanding and/or self-expression. It is about me and my mind. That’s wonderful, but it loses the balance necessary for the individual to gain a sense of connection to the indivisible. Even in marriage, we hesitate to say these days that two become one, because we want the marriage partners to be equal, and not have one subordinate or worse be the property of another. What is lost though is that sense of silence where the individual gives up the self and merges with the larger whole or God. It is the silence of the monk or hermit who many of the individualists would find too unsuccessful or too simple. It is the silence of humility reflected in the Zen story of Ryokan, a Zen master, who lived a simple life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing in it to steal. Ryokan returned and caught him. “You may have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.” The thief was confused, but slunk away with the clothes. Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. “Poor fellow,” he mused, “I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.”

Can we even contemplate that kind of silence, where we give up the self and feel that which is indivisible, or one with us? Can we can have any silence in our lives to empty ourselves of the chaos of life, to reflect upon the difficult issues we need to make decisions about, or simply to enjoy the vastness and beauty of our natural surroundings? Whether it is the silence that fills us or the silence that empties us, the problem is that most people are not comfortable with silence. In Waterville, Maine, I used to see this giant sign by the turnpike exit advertising a restaurant called The Silent Woman. The image on the billboard was of the body of a woman in a colonial dress, but she had no head. Now that will keep you silent. One can only imagine the number of men chuckling over the image of a woman who had a body but could not speak. And this is one of the primary reasons we react negatively to the idea of silence. Who wants to be silenced? It means someone has power over you, and tells you that what you have to say is irrelevant or stupid, such as children should be seen and not heard. What women have had to say has been devalued for so long it may seem that silence is more like a jail sentence, then it is the idea of having a choice of sharing those sentences filled with thoughts and ideas.

We think of oppressed women and political prisoners, and even children who are told to hush, and we know that being silenced is not something desirable. To be silenced may mean we cannot vote, we cannot speak, we cannot stand up for our selves for fear of our lives. We may be shamed when a teacher berates us, and we take it in silence for fear of greater repercussions. We wait in silence for it to be over. There may also be a sense of dread we associate with silence. The night is silent. For some this represents the unknown or the forbidden. We dare not enter the dark forest that is filled with the silence of night. Who know what lurks there? Lions and tigers and bears . . . Oh my! My hometown of New Salem, Massachusetts was recently featured in the Globe as the safest town in the whole state. It has had one crime in two years. The town administrator commented in the article that there was not much danger from people, I’m not worried about crime,’’ she said “I’m worried about the bear that might be in the woods.’’ In fact, New Salem is the only place in my life that I have encountered a bear in the wild. It was a little scary, but exciting, too!

If the silence of the woods is mostly an unfounded fear, what about the silence of death? Doesn’t the dark night remind us of the darkness that we all must face one day, and would rather not speak about. Or perhaps we cannot stop from speaking because we are afraid of the day when we will be forever silent. Those of us who have been with a loved one in their final moments know that even after they can no longer speak, there is a steady breathing and a continuing presence, but that the silence of the final breath signals to us a time when their lives will be forever silent. Words are important in creation. For instance, God said let there be light. When we can no longer say things, we are cut off from communicating. Speaking is often seen as something that distinguishes us from other animals, but this languages also makes us the only animal who is aware of death. So we say out loud, Hey, here I am. I am alive here. Silence can mean some fairly scary things, inferiority, powerlessness, illness and even ultimately death. To be alive is to be speaking. Some of this heritage we get from Judaism, where the faithful speak to God, and God speaks back to them directly, or at least through angels and prophets. The expression of the relationship with the divine was through prophecy and poetry. And this is largely the tradition we have maintained, sometimes manifest in the words and actions of men and women who have inspired us to create a more just and peaceful world.

Yet Judaism also recognizes that silence must be part of the witness of faith. God cannot be named in Judaism, and even when God is addressed directly, God says, I am who I am. When God spoke to Elijah on Mount Horeb, God could have done so in the wind, earthquake, fire or any number of loud, noisy ways. But He didn't. God spoke with a “still, small voice that takes away the last vestige of Elijah's fear of being all alone. Elijah hears God in the stillness.
The problem is we expect to have noise around us all the time. Noise lets us know we are alive. It lets us know there is work to be done and places to go and things to do. So we have music in the dentist’s office, and TV’s in the grocery store and elevators that talk to us, and tell us welcome to the hospital and pay before you go, and buses that say watch out for luggage left unaccompanied because who knows about silent presences that we cannot explain. We have noise all the time now, and not even a moment of silence when we might hear a silence that is the echo of the great bang or mystery from long ago that created us all, or a silence of sight upon a vast galaxy upon galaxy of galaxies of stars that we cannot see, not even with the most powerful telescope of all, and yet they seem like eternal fires of burning light against the darkness of silence that is the night sky, when the noises of the city stop and we look up.

Maybe the only silence we know is a few brief moments of that reflection time on what we are doing with our days, but that silence is really more an absence of all that noise. Got to get away from it all. How could we cultivate a presence for silence? We desire not merely a little emptiness of cars and youtube and children yelling, as good as that might be. We want some silence that replenishes our strength, and takes us some place that lets us see beyond the horizon of the bed post or the dash board, or even the monitor that we spend so much time tap tapping away at. We want silence so that we can empty the shopping lists and laundry lists and to do lists. But we also want silence so that we can fill ourselves with deeper places of love and harmony that are indivisible. We need moments to reflect on how we are spending our time, and maybe even reflect on ourselves and what we are doing, but we also need time to reflect on what is it all means, and what is the rhythm of that breathing, thinking, loving that flows from me to you. It is the end of noise. It is the end of talking. It is deep listening to the sound of no sound.

(Let’s try to hear that silence for just a moment)

Melville says all profound things are preceded by silence. Perhaps it is fitting that he said that in his novel Pierre, that was also titled The Ambiguities. There is ambiguity in silence. Silence portends that something is about to happen. Sometimes that is a disaster. I think of the silence that we all hear when a child has been injured, and is about to scream a blood curdling cry, and there is the brief moment, that often seems eternal before our ears actual hear the awful sound. They say there was an eerie silence before Pickett’s doomed Confederate troops assaulted the Union line in July 1863. Perhaps this speaks of the presence of the pain of life in small and universal ways. It is not merely that absence of the cacophony of noise that irritates us and makes it so we cannot think. No, this is the presence of something more, something silent that is indivisible from larger events. Yet it is not only pain, but something perhaps more vast, and even beautiful that is the observance of a blessing upon the universe with its mantle of stars or shifting of tides that tells us life will continue and love will endure. It is getting noisier all the time. And so, we must open ourselves to the silence that can fill our lives, and be a positive presence. Empty the noise.

Perhaps you will come to know the Silence of Remembrance. As a child I saw the vast clouds that scurried across the sky. They were stratus, and cirrus, and cumulus. They were low and flat, heavy with rain, white fluffy and billowy and soft as down, ready to lie on and be an angel forever, and also forbidding gray turning black. They were shapes of ducks and elephants, marching armies with row upon row of banners. I saw so many things in those silent sentinels of the sky, and it was all orchestrated by my father. We would lay on the front lawn on one of those lazy summer days when it is so hot and humid it seems the sky will crack. Now I associate any moments like those with him. It was a silence of relationship, of togetherness in witnessing those clouds. Whenever we honor someone who has died, we stop and say, there will now be a moment of silence for those who have died, for those who have given their lives. Our silence is images of remembrance of pain and sorrow, of sacrifice and courage, of love for something greater. We often have these moments for soldiers, but there is silence to for all those who struggle, each one of us who remembers a face or a life now gone, that gave life to us as parent, teacher or lover- the silence of the embrace and the hand of comfort and security. Let us share a few moments of the silence of remembrance. Let us listen to those lives.

Perhaps you will come to know the Silence of Trust. Long ago I learned to swim. In swimming you often have to learn to trust others. I remember teaching my boys, holding them in the water, and feeling their flailing arms and legs try to create a buoyancy to stay afloat. The trust for me though was in the silence I heard and even endured in the pool. I would surface dive, and go to the bottom. There it was silent. My stroke went from my chest out, as I became frog like to move along the bottom of the pool. My goal was to swim the length of the pool and back under water. It was silent for what seemed an eternity, but not very long for a boy to hold his breath and execute this little risk of bursting lungs and straining arms. It was run silent, run deep. But it was the silence of concentration that I learned, of trust of self to prepare to do what was required of me. It was one of those moments that precede great acts, or small ones that give us confidence that we can do something. When we prepare to hit a ball, or enter the pulpit or make the important presentation, or even more intensely to give that final push before birth, or gird up your loins for the final climb, push or jump. This silence of trust is to know that you are taking a risk, but you trust yourself, or those who are there with you. And you feel their arms holding on as though you were belaying off a mountain top. There is trust here in the universe that others will help you, and support you in the challenges you will face, and it will be enough. That there is even something trustworthy about the universe that will give you life, even in the face of death. So if you survive that disaster you trust that someone will try to get to you, and hold a hand out to you. We will go on and face challenging forces with hope and love that tomorrow will be better. Let us listen in silent trust of ourselves, and in another.

Perhaps you will come to know the Silence of Awe. It is silent as the clouds float or scurry by. I often thought they ran from the wind. It is silent underwater. We think of fish blowing bubbles, but it is silent communication down there. It is eye to eye, and all the while looking in different directions. It is silent when it snows. I am in awe of snow. Once told that every single snowflake is different, I have never gotten over that. I am silent before this universe of chaos and diversity and beauty and grief. The snow is cold. I don’t care much for cold anymore. I feel it in my bones now as I grow older. I know that snow can kill. My great uncle died in a snow storm long ago. Passed out and froze to death. Life can and will take us, you know, and as I said before that is why we sometimes cannot remain silent for long. We speak to remind ourselves that we are still here. But that cold, frozen snow that took my relative from this life is also silent in its beauty, its grandeur, its purity and freshness. Those flakes are different, individuals in a way, each asserting its own identity with uncommon flair. Each calling out in its silent passing that we might pay attention. Then in that individual falling they become indivisible. This snow is a silence that brings me joy to see and to hear. We see its cumulative effect making a dark landscape light. And isn’t that what we long for? It is some reassurance that the cold, dark deadness of winter will turn to a landscape of light and life. Further I swear I can hear the snow, not like the pitter patter of rain, but that the silent snow comes down with a sound. It is the sound of the universe of the great mystery that creates and destroys. It is the awe we feel in prayer. I have felt and heard this silence at Bryce Canyon and at Mesa Verde. I have felt and heard this silence at Stonehenge and Fountain’s Abbey in Yorkshire. We stand silent before the creation, and we stand silent before human creations that are touched by the holy. And we are silent. They reflect a universal harmony, a tune if you will that echoes in our hears, even if you cannot hear it. I hope there is silence for you and for me, so that we remember all that has gone before, so that we can trust ourselves to be alone and yet together in life and death, that we can be in awe of all that is and ever will be. It is all a part of us - the weather, the place, the people, indivisible and free.

Closing Words from Where Many Rivers Meet by David Whyte

Enough.
These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.

Until now.

“The Politics of Faith” by Mark W. Harris

January 10, 2008 - First Parish of Watertown, Unitarian Universalist

Call to Worship – Mark 12: 14-17

They came and said to Him, "Teacher, we know that You are truthful and defer to no one ; for You are not partial to any, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay a poll-tax to Caesar, or not? "Shall we pay or shall we not pay ?" But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, "Why are you testing Me? Bring Me a coin to look at." They brought one. And He said to them, "Whose likeness and inscription is this ?" And they said to Him, "Caesar's." And Jesus said to them, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." And they were amazed at Him.

Reading from “Remarks on Church and State” (1960) by John F. Kennedy

. . . Because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected president, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured — . . . So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again not what kind of church I believe in — for that should be important only to me — but what kind of America I believe in. I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew— or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end; where all men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind; and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of presidency in which I believe — a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group, nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation, or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

I would not look with favor upon a president working to subvert the First Amendment's guarantees of religious liberty. Nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so. And neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test — even by indirection — for it. If they disagree with that safeguard, they should be out openly working to repeal it.
I want a chief executive whose public acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none. . .

I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me. Whatever issue may come before me as president — on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject — I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise. But if the time should ever come — and I do not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible — when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same.

Sermon “The Politics of Faith” by Mark W. Harris

Did you know that every single person in this room has a disease? Can anyone name that disease? (Aging). In a recent issue of The New Yorker, a molecular biologist is quoted as follows: “Do you know, people used to not understand that aging is a disease?” When a scientists tells us aging is not a natural human process, but is a disease, many of us believe we must somehow stop this malady from progressing. Over the last generation or so there has been an obsession with life and death in America, and this period has also marked the interference of government in the determination of when life begins and when it should end. Jill Lepore writes that because medicine has been so successful in staving off death, we have become a culture that refuses to accept its reality. Aging? Something we can cure. Death? Something we can avoid. Religion has played a central role in this debate about life and death during this period. Ever since Karen Quinlin’s parents asked that she be removed from a respirator, and her doctors refused, decisions about life and death have ended up in courtrooms and in the halls of Congress. The catch phrases reverberate: Pro-choice, pro-life; death with dignity, right to life.

And the one major reverberation that hangs over it all is that nobody is rational or dispassionate about any of it. In the early 1960’s historian Richard Hofstadter suggested that American political life had long been affected by a style of mind that he called, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” It was named paranoid because it evoked heated qualities of exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy. It was not that the people were certifiably paranoid, but that they used paranoid modes of expression even though we would think of them as more or less normal people. Take Sarah Palin, please take Sarah Palin. This past summer she warned us that Obama’s health care plan would lead to death panels. Government bureaucrats were going to decide to pull the plug on Grandma. The debate over national health care devolved into an hysterical, conspiratorial fiction about what big government was going to do to you and your family. It is socialism. It is doctors acting on orders from Washington. It is akin to Nazi fanatics euthanatizing the undesirables. And those who advanced these ideas did so with an uncompromising, absolutist frame of mind. They were in fact, so successful in making the public listen to their paranoid fantasies, that those who were proposing a health plan had to defend the plan by explaining that they would not be replicating the evil perpetrated by Adolph Hitler.

This is my annual auction sermon. It was purchased by Charmian Proskauer. Today we examine the relationship between church and state, and the role of religious organizations in the legislative process just as we near the final debate on a compromise health bill between the House and the Senate. Have institutional churches interfered with the legislative process? Specifically, Charmian asked how can the Catholic church or its bishops get away with lobbying Congress to directly influence the outcome of legislation without losing their tax-exempt status. Isn’t this what people feared most when they were considering the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960? What meaning does the separation of church and state have in this context? My answers to all these concerns are yes and no, and it’s a thin line. Finally, and most forcefully we need to make our voices heard in the legislative process.

Today you heard excerpts from the classic speech by Kennedy on this very issue of how the separation of church and state would be honored by the election of a Catholic to the presidency. There was a bit of conspiratorial paranoia about this at that time. I remember it well even though I was only nine years old. You may recall that the paranoid fear was that a Catholic would not have the religious freedom to answer to his own conscience or the needs of the people, but rather would have to listen to the dictates of an autocratic Pope who was the sole fountain of truth in a dogmatic faith. In the speech Kennedy, affirms what Thomas Jefferson called the absolute wall between church and state in America, when he wrote to the Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut in 1802 that religious faith was grounded in private conviction, and that religious liberty was an immutable right of a citizen . This was a country where no Pope could tell the President what he must do, just as no Protestant minister could tell his/her parishioners how to vote. Kennedy was quite clear that he was the president not of just the Catholics, but of all the people. And he did not speak for his church, and the church did not speak for him.

Under George Bush some of this wall crumbled when public funds were used for church programs, and when certain Bush followers supported public religious expressions such as school prayer. When John Ashcroft was attorney general he held staff morning prayer meetings that were purportedly ecumenical, but references to Jesus were common. We also had a public prayer this week at the inauguration of the Watertown town officers, where the evangelical pastor let us know it was in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I am sure Muslims and Jews, and maybe even a few UUs were hardly edified. Under Ashcroft religious groups who received funds for public programs were exempted from following federal religious guidelines on hiring. This meant that in practice a Christian group could hire only Christians, and that if they hired Muslims they could tell them not to pray, and not to wear scarves. I was disturbed when the French government outlawed headscarves for Muslim women. Religious discrimination means some of our civil governments are not so civil, and have forgotten how to follow the Golden Rule.

Fundamentally, the separation of church and state does not mean that the church should not speak on issues of civic and political importance, nor that a person will not be influenced by their own religious convictions. Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia is someone who I would not typically agree with, but I do resonate with what he told interviewers repeatedly at Harvard Law School about his time with the Jesuits. He said they taught him: “Do not separate your religious life from your intellectual life. They’re not separate.” In other words we think and act out of religious conviction. Therefore, we must speak and act on what we believe to be true and necessary to achieve a just and peaceful society. A faith that we do not try to bring to bear on the world is not worth its salt. Think of the image of the Russian Orthodox clergy in 1917 sitting in debate over the colors of their vestments, while the revolution raged outside their doors. They were swept away by the political machinations of their time.

Church and state are not separate when it comes to our beliefs about how society should be shaped. We need to bring those convictions to the world. Take same sex or equal marriage as an example. Our faith teaches us that all couples, should be able to fulfill their love in the institution of marriage. A law enacted to support this would make it a civil legal contract for all, but would not require it of all religions. Only those who held the conviction would need follow it. Recently Catholic churches in Maine tried to stop equal marriage, by both collecting money and leafleting members to vote against it, and they have temporally succeeded when the law failed to be affirmed. At the same time Unitarian Universalist congregations rallied in opposition to the Catholic Church on this issue, and will continue to do so. This means it is certainly legitimate, and I would add necessary, for churches to try to influence legislation to a degree.

So the yes, is that churches, Catholic and Protestant alike must bring their beliefs to bear on the political marketplace, and voice their vision for the good society. The problem arises when there is an establishment of one religion over all others, and then this violates the wall, and constitutes coercion and the abuse of power. This is what I believe happened when the Catholic Bishops journeyed to Capitol Hill and, to use John F. Kennedy’s words, tried to impose their will directly upon the general populace, by instructing public officials to vote on a health care bill amendment that restricts access to safe and legal health care services, so that their one religion, Catholicism, becomes the law of the land. We all know there are many positions on abortion, running the gamut of religious beliefs about when life begins, and when abortion is appropriate. We also know that pro-choice positions, such as many Unitarian Universalists take are grounded in rights of private conviction and conscience, and affirm the freedom of religion. Abortion is often a heart wrenching and difficult issue, but nevertheless, it is the law of the land, and responses to this law represent the variety of faith positions citizens hold, and should be a matter of personal, private choice. Therefore, one religious perspective is forced on all women and their families, as a result of the adoption of the Stupak-Pitts amendment to the health care bill.

A further problem occurs when particular legislators or even the President is targeted. I was disgusted by Cardinal O’Malley’s behavior at Ted Kennedy’s funeral, as he lobbied Obama. The Catholic Church has also threatened politicians by name, saying that they should be considered outside of full communion with Christ, and are judged by God for the way they vote. They say that voting for a pro-choice legislator is cooperating with evil. This is not only trying to impose their will, and thus an abuse of power, but also supporting or targeting particular politicians as worthy or not worthy of your vote. They seem ready to condemn politicians to hell because they cannot force them to vote as they wish, while many of the politicians merely want to reflect the will of the people they represent, or at least want to uphold the right of private conviction. Now the politicians have succumbed to the bullying of the church, and may allow them to impose its teaching on everyone depending upon what the final health care bill says. The current House version not only says that federal money may not be used, but it restricts freedom to even choose at all, even if people pay for it themselves.

The greatest irony for me occurred when I saw the website for the US Conference of Catholic bishops. While they pictured a pregnant women with the headline “Saving Lives, Not Destroying Them,” I was reminded of how many lives they destroyed with the hypocritical statements they make just below the pregnant woman. They say they support “A truly universal health care policy,” and “access for all with a special concern for the poor,” yet what they coerce on others is not universal or helpful to the poor, it is the destruction of lives with greater poverty, fewer choices, and the rejection of personal conviction, especially for those with lower incomes. So they remain tax exempt, and will likely continue to do, as they cry in the meantime about how federal dollars are used to fund things they find morally objectionable, when much of what they manipulate to achieve are abuses of their power. To those of us who believe all people should be treated the same and be given the right of private conviction or judgment in matters of religious faith, just as Jefferson demanded, this is morally repugnant.

What this means in the context of the separation of church and state is that we must continue to fight for the wall of separation by supporting the rights of conscience, and by questioning those churches that seem to violate the separation by trying to impose their political will. What should the role of organized religion be in the legislative process? As I have implied, we need to make our voices heard. It is terrible that women’s reproductive rights were sacrificed in an attempt to advance the health care bill. Some would say why bother with a bill that has lost so much, and may have no public option. But we do need to consider the mere symbolic value of the bill. For what it will say for the first time in law, is that everyone deserves health care. Health care is a basic human right. Despite its flaws it will imply that the basic responsibility of our land is to take care of all its people. The implication of that broadening of human rights is why we must be more active in the legislative process, not less. Our principles as a faith call for the voices of all faiths to be heard, they call for freedom, and they call for the upholding of private conviction. In a pluralistic land, we cannot uphold any kind of religious establishment, where one faith supersedes the others in any way. As long as there are religions that behave the way the Catholic bishops have, then we must be ever more active in the legislative process to ensure freedom prevails. But there are other reasons as well, not the least of which is the destruction of our environment. A stronger voice in the legislative process must supplement all that we are doing personally such as the light bulbs we replace, the Prius’ we drive, or the water we save, because fundamental legislative change must take place. Think of what didn’t happen in Copenhagen, and you know why your voice must be louder and more effective, if we are to save this planet.

Charmian asked me if religious organizations should tell their members how to vote. Technically, we are not suppose to support particular candidates or parties. We can support issues, but as with all our beliefs, we want to make sure we have informed people, who can make good choices about what is right and just for our society so that all people are treated fairly and equally. I do believe we should distribute literature on public issues. Our voice is an important one in creating a better world, and if our words about equality and fairness can be distributed more widely then that is only a good thing. Finally, I am not generally in favor of collecting money for specific legislative actions, but if I lived in the state of Maine, as I will one day, I must say I would take up a church offering to support equal marriage. My faith above all things demands that I stand on the side of love. My faith will not let me allow the hate mongers to win in the end. I think we have to engage in these activities because our conscience demands it of us. Tax exempt status is maintained as long as it is not partisan politics. The Bishops may have crossed the line here. We would too, if we told members how to vote, but generally not so, especially when it comes to broadening human rights, and bringing about equality. Then the love in our hearts requires us to engage in the political process, and even promote specific actions.

When we speak about the separation of church and state we usually remember the large shadow thrown by Jefferson, who wanted the separation especially because he worried that the establishment of a church would destroy a free state, and the freedom of its citizenry. While Jefferson worried that the church would destroy the state, Roger Williams, who lived 150 years before Jefferson, feared the state would destroy the church. Williams was put on trial in Massachusetts in 1635. He feared what a civil state could impose religiously. Think today of Catholics and evangelicals and their influence peddling. He testified at his trial about what the abuse of civil power might do to “the soul of the people, a religion, a worship, a ministry.” He said, “The state should give free and absolute permission of conscience to all men in what is spiritual alone.” Otherwise, he told his accusers, “Ye have lost yourselves! Your breath blows out the candle of liberty in this land.” Williams was found guilty on both civil and religious grounds, and banished from Massachusetts. The sentence was imposed in January. Think of the dead of winter in this wilderness. Nevertheless, Native Americans in Narragansett Bay gave him shelter, and the following summer he founded Providence Plantation to provide a “shelter to persons distressed for conscience.” It was intended to be a civil government that only exercised authority in civil things. Williams called for soul freedom, and so the code of laws enacted stated that all people “may walk as their consciences persuade them, every one in the name of his God.” We are still working on that one, but our voices need to be part of the chorus calling on America to preserve and enact its vision of soul freedom.

Closing Words from Roger William

In 1635 Roger William addressed his accusers with these words:

“I do affirm it to be against the testimony of Christ Jesus for the civil state to impose upon the soul of the people, a religion, a worship, a ministry. The state should give free and absolute permission of conscience to all men in what is spiritual alone. Ye have lost yourselves! Your breath blows out the candle of liberty in this land.”

May every breath we take, preserve the candle of liberty in our land.