First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

The Qualities of Leadership

The idea of the election eve sermon goes back to the earliest days of our Puritan Congregationalist heritage, when democracy existed not so much as a system of political government, but as a process for a covenant community to discern together the will of god. Affirming that divine guidance might come not down through ecclesiastical authority, but rather arise from the insight of any member of the group, however lowly their status, our separatist spiritual ancestors insisted that everyone should be heard, and that the community should reason together until a consensus was reached. Voting, by this understanding, was not a trade-off of personal interests, nor an opinion poll, but a report of each person's earnest conviction of how best to interpret the direction of divine providence. It was assumed that a sermon reminding the participants of their sacred obligations would be appropriate and helpful; it was also assumed, as early on was most often the case, that all candidates for a given office were members of the same congregation. Thus the preacher's task was not to instruct people for whom to vote - to have done so would have been divisive, and insulting to those members not thus endorsed, but more importantly, it would have short-circuited the process of personal discernment by which god's will was to be made manifest. Rather, the purpose of these sermons was to remind the voters of the solemn responsibility and holy privilege of their franchise, and to exhort the candidates, whichever of them might be elected, to the faithful fulfillment of their duties in the offices for which they were about to be chosen.

In the course of this 2004 election season, much has been made of the role of churches and other faith communities in the process, and their influence upon today's voters. I believe four things in this regard: I believe, first of all, that casting a ballot is a sacred responsibility, a kind of secular sacrament. Those who might vote and do not are ceding away their power and withholding their wisdom, however little or great, from their neighbors and their nation. Second, I believe that our religion can and should and does profoundly influence the way we vote; if your faith does not make any difference in this aspect of your life, where does it matter? Our voting reflects our convictions, and our convictions reflect our faith, or else there is a serious disconnect somewhere in our personal integrity. Third, I believe that it is not irrelevant to know the sources of our would-be leaders' most basic commitments. Politicians should not - indeed, I suppose that they cannot - cut themselves off from their spiritual resources or the ethical guidance that has informed their lives, while they labor to advance what they understand to be the common good. Almost every specific religious heritage has given the world serious public servants, who have striven for a public justice and good will that transcends sectarian prejudice, without ceasing to be personally nourished by their own spiritual identity. Finally, I believe that it is not the place of the church today, any more than it was two or three centuries ago, to suggest that all its members ought only to vote one way. Particularly is this true in our liberal tradition, but it also happens to be a condition of certain legal privileges bestowed by our society on religious institutions of all types.

There are four good reasons for this requirement of reticence on the part of faith communities, which I support and seek to abide by because I believe in it. First of all, and in a liberal congregation more so than most, people of intelligence, integrity, and good will may disagree about the best policy, program or personality by which to bring about the common good that we all seek. We affirm, and we seek to live in the conviction, that such diversity enriches and strengthens our community; that we grow in understanding and wisdom by encountering and reasoning with those whose ideas differ from our own. Difficult as that ideal may be to live up to in this contentious season, if we do not practice it now, it is only a pious slogan, and not a real guiding principle of our covenant together. So the first reason for religious congregations not to instruct their members who or what to vote for is that such direction will never accurately reflect the differing views of all members, and will inevitably leave some whose fellowship matters to us feeling hurt and excluded by their community. In the second place, our own commitment to respect for the human dignity of all people ought to make us reluctant to lend ourselves to the kind of personally bitter partisan invective that arises whenever any group finds itself of one mind around political issues. This is human nature, and cannot be avoided entirely; in fact, it is one of the ways in which we learn, and come to formulate our opinions. I confess that I have myself enjoyed chuckles at the expense of particular candidates over the course of this campaign, but I do not think that is what we should be hearing or expecting from this pulpit. When we speak in the serious context of our humanist aspirations and commitments, it ought to be with respect and compassion for all persons, not in ways that would wound or condemn. Moreover, in the third place, I believe that it is our task here to consider as profoundly as possible the issues that shape our world and the quality of our lives; not to dwell upon personalities. Too many incidental factors come into play when one begins to recommend individual candidates, evaluations of strategy and idiosyncratic quirks that ought to be irrelevant to the questions that demand our attention as people of principle and faith. We need to talk about matters of justice, of prosperity, of war and peace, of our liberties and responsibilities to this nation; these are questions that should not turn on the particular human characteristics or foibles of individual men and women. Finally, if we want to discourage more militant faith traditions, that would willingly impose their views on us if they had the opportunity, from using their resources to make political candidates beholden to them and their agendas, then we ought not to engage in partisan campaigning in our own congregation. We cannot with integrity require of others a reticence that we do not observe ourselves.

In view of these disclaimers, I will happily tell you in personal conversation who I intend to vote for, and why, but even that mere factual announcement feels out of place coming from the pulpit in the current climate. Yet I have some things to say about the choices that lie before us in this campaign, and the way in which we might approach these decisions, that harken back to the original purposes of the election eve sermon. Last Thursday evening, at the Interfaith Forum discussion, the clergy were asked to reflect on what larger cultural influences might currently be shaping the ways in which we both read and create scripture in our own day. What occurred to me immediately is the climate of fear, and the hunger for safety, that it seems has characterized our national life most palpably since 9/11/2001. I have one UU colleague who argues that we are all suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and that this is causing us to react in ways not typical of us as individuals or as a nation, as well as affecting our ability to perceive reality correctly. I suspect she may have a point.

Both the candidates and the pundits in the current campaign have made much political hay out of this issue of safety, with many urgent claims about who can best assure the security of the country, but I am not persuaded that we have effectively addressed the question of what it is that actually makes us, or makes us feel, safe. For me, I confess that the feeling of security is not primarily a military issue; terrorism isn't what frightens me most. Personally, I feel safer when I know that I cannot be arbitrarily designated an 'enemy combatant' by the government, and imprisoned indefinitely without charges filed or access to an attorney. I feel safer when I know that my personal correspondence, conversations and records cannot be secretly investigated by the FBI without a judge's order. I feel safer when toxic chemicals are not allowed to contaminate the ground water I drink and the fish I eat. I would feel safer in the assurance that my husband, my doctor and I could decide whether or not it made sense for me to carry a pregnancy to term, and how best to protect my health. I would feel safer if my government joined the other nations of the world in taking seriously credible science regarding global climate change, and trying to do something about it. I would feel safer if my government joined the other nations of the world in supporting an international criminal court, where terrorists and those who commit genocide could be brought to justice. I would feel safer in a legal system that joined the rest of the civilized world in rejecting the idea of state sponsored execution as a form of law enforcement. I would feel safer being a citizen of a country that was known to uphold scrupulously the provisions of the Geneva convention, and to support fully the work of the United Nations. I would feel safer in a nation that was taking leadership in the world-wide phasing out of nuclear weapons. I would feel safer in a world where jobs, capital, goods and people could move as freely from one nation to another as they do from Nebraska to New Jersey. I felt safer in a country that had 387 billion dollars in the bank than I do in one that owes a 413 billion dollar debt. I would feel less vulnerable to terrorist attacks not so much by finding Osama bin Laden, as by living in a country whose international foreign policy was coherent, modest, principled, and dependable, and whose leaders were respected partners in dialogue with the community of nations. Elevated levels of weapons systems and bravado do not make me feel safe, either individually or internationally; the security I want comes only from being an honest and generous neighbor whose intentions are honorable and whose word is trustworthy. Maybe it's just me, but that's the kind of safety I wish we were talking about in this campaign, if safety is what we're after. How about you?

But look, safety is not what democracy is about; it never was. It wasn't security that our pilgrim ancestors were seeking when they became pioneers in an unfamiliar land - it was integrity, and opportunity. Those are the values that democracy breeds and fosters; the risk of believing in ourselves and each other, the persistent hope that we can find a way to make the future better than the past, in ways we don't even know about yet. If all you want is safety, then close the windows, lock the doors, stock up on canned goods and dig a moat; don't let in any scary new people or new ideas, just keep everything familiar and comfortable. Democracy is about being challenged by other possibilities; it's about being made uncomfortable by new information and alternative views. When the covenant communities of the puritan churches spoke in terms of the will of god, they never supposed that what divine providence meant was for them to be safe. Quite the contrary; god's plan as they understood it demanded much from them; risk, and sacrifice; labor, and commitment. We probably wouldn't use that same vocabulary today, but we are nevertheless the heirs of their faith - that revelation is not sealed, that there is yet more light waiting to break forth upon the human heart and mind.

They made some mistakes, too, those forbears of ours. They had the concept right, but they didn't have the circle big enough. They thought women didn't count, a lot of the time, and they generally thought that the indigenous peoples of this land were in the way of god's will, rather than participants in it, or even potentially messengers of it. They got it that none of them was fundamentally better than the others, and they had to listen to each other and work together if they were going to achieve their great dreams - that was huge, what they taught us about that idea. But the biggest problem was that they thought that together they were special; that god loved them better than everyone else, and that they knew what god wanted better than anyone else. We inherited that arrogance, too, here in this nation that they helped to found. We keep learning, over and over, generation by generation, that it's a mistake, but somehow it's in our DNA, and we keep coming back to that notion that we are special, and somehow the rules for everybody else just don't apply to us.

That's what I would urge you to be thinking about, as you enter the voting booth on November 2^nd; what part of the legacy of this nation's founding principles are you trying to carry into the future? Is it the idea that we are somehow history's darlings, that we know something about the destiny of the planet that nobody else can know, so that whatever we think is right, and whatever we say ought to prevail? Or is it the longing to be kept safe from all the terrors of life; to be protected from the consequences of our ignorance, and indulged in our self-concern? Are we indeed willing to trade in the liberties that our ancestors purchased with their toil and sacrifice, for the promise not to be disturbed - as if such a promise could ever actually be kept? Surely not; surely our faith in human dignity and possibility and mutuality is greater than this! In the affirmation of this Society's mission statement, that we read together to welcome our new members this morning, we said that "individually and collectively, we assume responsibility for our future, our community, our children, and our world." That's the conviction we have to carry into the voting booth with us - that whatever insight we have been able to cobble together out of the avalanche of propaganda that has been pouring over us for the past weeks and months, whatever wisdom we have won from the experience of our lives, we have an obligation to offer in the service of the community in which we live and move and have our being, for the sake of the children whose world we are borrowing, to create the open future that we have told ourselves and one another is still possible.

My friends, this is no time for despair; we cannot afford the luxury of cynicism just now. There are no guarantees, except that our lives will always be filled with challenges, and, equally important, that we need not confront our struggles in isolation unless that is our choice. We may not bend history to our will in the immediate moment; that was never assured. But we can at least take up the legacy and the promise of democracy with a certain reverence and something like humility, seeking as our ancestors did, the more noble path of human freedom and unfolding truth. We can at least be serious about our responsibility to help choose the future; an obligation that calls upon us to be thoughtfully hopeful for the good of our communities and the world. Our forbears believed that they were given the task of building god's kingdom of justice and love on earth; we, their heirs, have no such sense of divine commission, but all the more awareness that if a world of kinship and compassion is to be realized, it will be through such human wisdom and commitment as we are able offer one another. In that sacred duty, and in that ultimate confidence, may we gladly and proudly exercise the right of free people to cast our vote.