Religion in society – Page 3 – Dan Harper

After the Election

Sermon copyright (c) 2024 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. The text below may have typographical errors, missing words, etc., because I didn’t have time to make corrections.

Readings

The first reading is an excerpt from the poem “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” by Ross Gay:

Friends, will you bear with me today,
for I have awakened
from a dream in which a robin
made with its shabby wings a kind of veil
behind which it shimmied and stomped something from the south
of Spain, its breast aflare,
looking me dead in the eye
from the branch that grew into my window,
coochie-cooing my chin,
the bird shuffling its little talons left, then right,
while the leaves bristled
against the plaster wall, two of them drifting
onto my blanket while the bird
opened and closed its wings like a matador
giving up on murder,
jutting its beak, turning a circle,
and flashing, again,
the ruddy bombast of its breast
by which I knew upon waking
it was telling me
in no uncertain terms
to bellow forth the tubas and sousaphones,
the whole rusty brass band of gratitude
not quite dormant in my belly —
it said so in a human voice,
“Bellow forth” —
and who among us could ignore such odd
and precise counsel?

The second reading was a poem titled “Over the Weather” by Naomi Shihab Nye (not available online due to copyright restrictions).

The third reading was from the Talmud, Shabbat 31a, the William Davidson translation:

“There was another incident involving a gentile who came before Shammai and said to Shammai: Convert me on condition that you teach me the entire Torah while I am standing on one foot. Shammai pushed him away with the builder’s cubit in his hand. This was a common measuring stick and Shammai was a builder by trade. The same gentile came before Hillel. He … said to him: That which is hateful to you do not do to another; that is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation. Go study.”

Sermon

I’d like to begin this sermon by telling you a story from the Confucian tradition. If you’re my age or older and grew up as a Unitarian Universalist, you might remember this story from the old Sophia Fahs book “From Long Ago and Many Lands.” However, Fahs got some of the details of the story wrong. My version of the story closely follows the version given in “The Sacred Edict, Containing Sixteen Maxims of Emperor Kang-He [Kangxi],” which was translated in 1817 by William Milne (London: Black, Kingsbury, Parbury, and Allen, pp. 51-52).

The story goes like this.

The Kangxi Emperor was the fourth emperor of the Qing dynasty in China; he’s a historical figure who rules China from 1661 to 1722. Early in his reign, China had been torn apart by wars. During these internal rebellions, the people had to leave their farms to fight, and farms were destroyed in battles. Eventually the Kangxi Emperor restored peace throughout the land. The people could tend to their farms, and food once more became plentiful. By the end of his reign, the Chinese Empire was for the most part a land of peace an plenty.

Towards the end of his reign, however, the Emperor grew concerned about what would happen to China after he died. His own children had proved to be incapable of ruling. What principles, what rules could he give to the next emperor so that China would continue to be a land of peace and plenty? As he began to write down his maxims for peaceful rule, he recalled an event from early in his reign.

During his long reign, he had gone on many Inspection Tours, journeys through China allowed him to inspect for himself that the land was peaceful and the people were happy. On these inspection tours, he was of course accompanied by hundreds of people. Riders on horseback went out ahead on the road to let the people know that the Emperor was coming. Next came the many horses carrying the baggage, tended by more riders on horseback. Then came skilled warriors, with their bows and arrows slung over their shoulders, also riding horses. They were followed by more warriors walking just ahead of the emperor. The emperor himself rode in an open carriage drawn by magnificent white horses; a golden parasol protected the emperor from the sun. Behind him marched more warriors carrying long lances that pointed high in the air. At times, the Emperor traveled on rivers and canals, in which case all these people were on boats.

In every village and town he passed through, the Emperor’s advisors asked questions to learn if the people were living happy and peaceful lives. In one place, the townspeople told the emperor and his advisors about a large family which was reputed to be the happiest and most peaceful family in all of China.

Curious to see this renowned family, the Kangxi Emperor told his advisors, “We must go see this family, to find out what makes them special.”

And so the Emperor’s entire retinue went to this family’s compound. A man named Chang-kung greeted them, bowing low, and asking them to partake of what humble food and drink he could offer such distinguished guests.

“My dear Master Chang-kung,” said one of the advisors, “we do not need refreshments, but we would like to know about your family.”

“There are nine generations of our family living here,” said Chang-kung. He pointed to an old woman sitting nearby, who was attended by two young men, and said, “This revered elder is of my great-grandmother’s generation.” He next pointed to a woman carrying a new-born baby. “That child is my brother’s great grandchild. That makes nine generations.

The emperor’s advisor said, “We have been told that yours is the happiest and most peaceful family in all the land.”

“I cannot say if ours is the happiest and most peaceful family anywhere,” said Chang-kung. “Yet we do live in peace and happiness.”

Indeed, the advisors saw that everyone they could see appeared to be happy. The children played together, but there were no tears, no arguments, no shouting. The adults worked at various tasks, and again there were no arguments or raised voices.

“The emperor would like to ask you this question,” said the advisor: “How it is that so many people live together so peacefully?”

Chang-kung turned to a young man who stood near by, and asked him politely to go and fetch ink, paper, and a brush. The young man returned in an instant with the paper and brush, and a young woman followed him carrying a small table.

On the paper, Chang-kung wrote the same word over and over again, the Chinese word rén.(1) This word can be translated into English by several different words, including benevolence, forbearance, patience, kindness, humanity, and humaneness. The Chinese character for this word is made up of two radicals: first, the character for “person,” and second the character for “two.” Thus, the character itself shows that rén is what is required whenever there are two or more people together.

Chang-kung pointed to the word he had written. “This is why we live in peace and harmony,” he said.

“But this is exactly what Master Kong said,” said one of the Emperor’s advisors. (English speakers say “Confucius,” but he is known in Chinese as Kongzi.) Quoting Kongzi, the advisor said, “‘To behave to every one as if you were receiving a great guest; …[and] not to do to others as you would not wish done to yourself’ [Analects 12.2] — this is ren.”

A second advisor said, “Kongzi also said: ‘when alone, to be sedately grave; in the management of business, to be reverently attentive; in intercourse with others, to be strictly sincere’ [Analects 13.19] — this too is ren.”

A third advisor said, “Kongzi also said, ‘Kindness is not far off; the person who seeks for kindness has already found it.’ This, too, is ren.”

“As to all that, I cannot say,” said Chang-kung, bowing low. “I do not know the classics as you do. I can only say that in our family we respect the humanity of each other.”

The Kangxi Emperor heard all this, and saw how Chang-king’s family lived in peace and harmony. And this he remembered when, late in his life, he wrote down his maxims for maintaining peace and harmony in society.(2)

So why do I tell you this story?

First of all, I’m telling you this story as a reminder that through most of history, human society has been neither kind nor fair nor humane. Chang-kung’s family was remarkable precisely becuase it was so unusual to have so many people living in harmony with one another. We may have complaints about the United States — and there are many valid complaints to be made — but the many armed rebellions in southern China in the early years of the Kangxi Emperor’s rule made life far, far worse. Yes, it is true that the United States has seen brutal and vicious behavior, such as the epidemic of lynchings in the twentieth century, but from what I’ve read, those Chinese rebellions were even worse.

A second reason I tell you this story is because we’ve just gone through a bruising election cycle. During this election cycle, I feel as though the best word to describe many Americans is “frantic.” Confucius understood that to be spiritually centered is to have some measure of calmness. When we are frantic, it often means we have drifted away from our spiritual center. I feel as though many of us in the United States have drifted from our spiritual centers. It has been my observation that when we human beings become frantic, when we drift from our spiritual centers, it is too easy to forget our ideals of human equality and liberty.

If you are uncomfortable using the concept of spirituality, we can also describe this tendency using the model of the triune brain. We human beings all have the “lizard brain,” what some psychologist call the “reptilian brain,” that part of us which is in charge of more basic impulses such as fear, hunger, territoriality, and so on. We humans also have the “paleomammalian brain,” that is, the “old mammal brain,” which controls our emotions and motivations, as well as many everyday behaviors like parenting. The third part of the triune brain is the “neomammalian brain,” or “new mammal brain,” which is the seat of language, reasoning, planning ahead, and abstract thinking. By using the model of the triune brain, it’s easy to understand that when we are frantic, we are not using our neocortex, our neomammalian brain; we are probably using our reptilian brain. Thus when we are frantic, we can actually become incapable of reasoning and planning and higher thought. Andrew E. Budson, a cognitive behavioral neurologist, puts it this way:

“Given that there have been 10 million years of evolution developing our neocortex — our neomammalian brain — why does it seem to fail so often in normal individuals? Why do we so often hear about politicians and celebrities acting on their primitive drives and urges and committing horrendous acts? The answer is one that any small child can give you: We all can make a choice, a choice as to whether we are going to give in to the primitive urges and desires of our reptilian brain or, instead, use our neocortex to control them.” (3)

This lies behind the secret of Chang-kung’s family. Indeed, this lies behind the spiritual path of Confucianism. There is much to criticize about Confucianism (just as there is much to criticize about any human institution), but over and over again the teachings of Confucianism emphasize both that we can use our higher selves to control our actions; and also that remaining spiritually centered helps us to use our higher selves.

One reason to stay spiritually centered is that it keeps us from being frantic. Imagine living with nine generations of your family in one family compound — this could be enough to make anyone frantic! Yet when we keep ourselves centered, keep ourselves from being frantic, then our higher brain — the neocortex, our neomammalian brain — can function.

Remember, this is a choice we get to make. This is the choice that Chang-kung’s family made. When dealing with the needs of a couple of generations of elders, and also the needs of families with young children, it would have been easy for Chang-kung to let his reptilian brain take over. But he didn’t. He stayed focused on the teaching of Confucianism — we might say, he stayed spiritually centered — and so he was able to retain his higher brain functions.

I suspect the reptilian brain lay behind behind the internal rebellions in the early years of the Kangxi Emperor’s reign. When we let the reptilian brain take over, we become frantic, we become susceptible to engaging in stupid actions. And there will always be those, like the unscrupulous leaders of the internal rebellions in the Kangxi Emperor’s rule, who want to tempt us into engaging in stupid actions so that they can take advantage of us.

Indeed, we are seeing this right now in the United States in all the negative talk you can find on social media. Social media generally bypasses the neocortex, and goes straight for the lower brain functions. Social media directly engages our reptilian brains and our paleomammalian brains. We get frantic, we lose our spiritual centers, and we do stupid things. This benefits the owners of the social media companies, who are just like the leaders of the Qing dynasty rebellions.

It’s not just social media, of course. Our society has so many ways to bypass our higher brain functions, and activate our reptilian brains and our paleomammalian brains. We even do this in our face-to-face interactions. When you hear someone demonizing a political opponent, that person is trying to bypass your higher brain functions. They may be doing it unwittingly, but the effect is the same.

Now, it may seem wrong when I say that religion and spirituality can help us keep us from bypassing our higher brain functions. After all, isn’t religion nothing but superstition and false belief? Well, first of all, this is where we can learn from certain progressive Buddhists, who tell us that practices like meditation are simply technologies that we can choose to use for the highest purposes. Confucians adopted this technology for their own purposes, removing the Buddhist theology and calling it “quiet-sitting.” So religion and spirituality can provide us with technologies for calming ourselves, and keeping our neocortex engaged.

Equally importantly, it depends on how you use religion and spirituality. Just about anything we humans do is capable of being misused, so that we bypass our higher brain functions. I’m a big supporter of education, but education can (and has) been misused to indoctrinate rather than to educate. I’m a big supporter of democracy, but demagogues can (and do) misuse democratic processes and institutions for their own manipulative purposes. Similarly, religion and spirituality can be misused to manipulate us, rather than to help us use our higher brain functions. But just because bad actors can misuse them doesn’t mean these human institutions are irredeemably broken. We can make a choice about how we use them.

I have come to believe that the most useful technology that religion offers us is a values-based community. This may not sound like a technology, but it is. Religion and spirituality offers us the technology of intentional communities in which we come together specifically to keep from being frantic, to keep us engaged with our higher selves. (That’s one of the primary purposes of our First Parish community.) We know that human beings are susceptible to being sucked in to groups that appeal to our reptilian brains. We humans are social being, and we need to be in communities. So joining an intentional community designed to engage our higher selves can be a useful tool to keep us out of other communities that deliberately engage our destructive reptilian brains.

We live in a time and place where we are incredibly divided. I’m watching otherwise good and kind people say things like, “I can no longer talk to anyone from the opposite political party.” That is the reptilian brain talking. That is not the higher brain talking. And this is an incredibly destructive trend. It erodes civil discourse. It leads to violence.

Faced with this trend, it’s all too easy to say, “Well, everyone else is doing it, so I’m going to do it too!” But a little thought shows us this is illogical; this is in fact a case of bypassing our higher brain functions. Just because our political leaders and other celebrities are bypassing their higher brain functions doesn’t mean we should bypass our higher brain functions. On the contrary, we really want to keep our higher brain functions engaged. In times like these, we really want to be our best selves. Having spent twenty-five years in education, I think about it this way: somebody has to be the grown-ups in the room; it might as well be us.

And the thing is, if we manage to stay engaged with our higher selves, if we manage to keep our higher brain functions engaged, we will be calmer and happier. Remember the nine generations of Chang-kung’s family living together in one family compound. They ordered their lives with the Confucian value of rén — benevolence, forbearance, patience, kindness, humanity, humaneness, however you want to translate it. And perhaps the best way to translate it is in that phrase from the Confucian Analects: Do not to do to others as you would not wish done to yourself. This is almost identical to the wisdom of the rabbis in the Torah, who taught us: “That which is hateful to you do not do to another; that is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation. Go study.”

May we study benevolence, forbearance, patience, kindness, humanity, and humaneness. May this spirit fill our hearts and minds, and fill us with a sense of peace. Then may that peace within spread outwards to our families, even unto nine generations. When our selves and our families are regulated by humaneness, patience, and kindness, then too will our nation be so regulated. And then perhaps peace will spread throughout our land.

Notes

(1) This word is also transliterated as “jen.”

(2) For a brief summary of the story, see entry on Chang-kung in Herbert Giles, A Chinese Biographical Dictionary (London, 1898). Lin Yutang tells the story differently in his essay “The Chinese People” (The China Critic, vol. IV, no. 15 [9 April 1931], 343-347): “There was once a Prime Minister, Chang Kung-ni, who was much envied for his earthly blessedness of having nine generations living together in one household. Once the Emperor, Tang Kao-chung, asked him the secret of his success, and the minister asked for pen and paper, on which he wrote over a hundred characters of the word ‘patience’ or ‘endurance’. Instead of taking that as a sad commentary on the family system, the Chinese people have ever after envied his example, and the phrase ‘hundred patience’ (po jen) has passed into current phraseology.”

(3) Andrew E Budson, “Don’t Listen to Your Lizard Brain,” Psychology Today “Managing Your Memory” blog, 3 Dec. 2107, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/managing-your-memory/201712/don-t-listen-your-lizard-brain accessed 6 Nov. 2024.

The Importance of Democracy

Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. The text below may have typographical errors, missing words, etc., because I didn’t have time to make any corrections.

Readings

The first reading was the poem “Democracy,” written in 1949 by Langston Hughes (not available online due to copyright restrictions).

The second reading was a transcript of a 1989 interview with novelist, poet, and jazz musician Gil Scott-Heron. The interviewer was documentary filmmaker Skip Blumberg.

“I think that the Black Americans have been the only real die-hard Americans here, because we’re the only who have carried the process through…. Everyone else has sort of skipped stages. We’re the ones who marched, we’re the ones who carried the Bible, we’re the ones who carried the flag, we’re the ones who tried to go through the courts — and being born American didn’t seem to matter. Because we were born American but we still had to fight for what we were looking for.”

The third reading is from “Haitian Migrants Who Found Safety at UUA Headquarters in Boston Share Their Stories,” a story in the most recent UU World magazine. In this story, the author interviews two refugees from Haiti.

“In Chile Rodrick met Angela, who was studying to be a nurse in Haiti but, like he, left in search of a better life…. Rodrick found work, and they were able to afford a car. But someone tried to steal their car, and in the process of stopping the crime Rodrick was stabbed twice. At that point, they decided to head to the United States…. Asked why they chose the United States, Rodrick answered, ‘The reason we chose America is to get stability that’s missing in other countries.’”

Sermon: “The Importance of Democracy”

If you come here regularly on Sunday mornings, you may have noticed that for the past couple of months I’ve been mentioning democracy nearly every week. For us Unitarian Universalists, democracy has become an important religious principle.

Placing religious importance on democracy may sound strange. Our society tends to assume that all religions are like Christianity, and because several branches of Christianity are hierarchical, our society tends to assume that all religions are hierarchical and non-democratic.

We Unitarian Universalists, on the other hand, are devoted to democracy. Democracy is a core spiritual value for us Unitarian Universalists. We don’t have a hierarchy, and instead connect with other Unitarian Universalist congregations in the United States through a democratically-run association, the Unitarian Universalist Association. Similarly, we connect with other Unitarians and Universalists throughout the world through a democratically-run organization called the International Unitarian/Universalist Collaboration.

Operating under democratic principles helps our leaders to stay in close communication with those they are leading. And while we may trust our leaders, we are constantly evaluating them in our minds to make sure they are adhering to our shared goals and values. We want leaders to remain accountable to the people they’re leading, and we want leaders to be accountable to our highest values.

This springs from our deeply held beliefs about the nature of human beings. We know that individual human beings are limited beings. Any human being is capable of making mistakes. That is to say, all human beings are fallible — I’m fallible, you’re fallible, our leaders are fallible. But when we come together in democratically-run groups and hold each other accountable for our actions and beliefs, we can help correct each other. Our dream is that if come together in community, together we can move toward a world of truth and goodness.

That’s the basic theory of democracy: no one person has all the answers, but if we work together maybe we can move towards truth and goodness. In practice, democracy does not chart a direct path towards truth and goodness. The history of Black Americans provides an excellent case study of how American democracy has not followed a direct path straight to truth and goodness.

This is what Langston Hughes was expressing in the first reading this morning, the poem titled “Democracy.” Hughes wrote that poem in 1949, at a difficult time for Black Americans. During the Second World War — which was ostensibly a war for democracy, and against fascism — Black American soldiers served with honor and distinction in both the European and the Pacific theatres. Here at home, Black women took jobs in war-related industries to help further the war effort. Yet once the Second World War was over, Black Americans continued to experience the same discrimination they had been subjected to prior to the war. When Black Americans pointed out this contradiction, some White Americans acknowledged this was true, but counseled Black Americans to wait a little longer and eventually they would gain the equality they felt they deserved in a democracy. When Hughes heard White Americans suggest that he wait for true equality, he wrote:

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I’m dead….

By 1949, Langston Hughes and many other Black Americans had grown tired of waiting for the equality promised by the Declaration of Independence. Nor did they take comfort in suggestions that they help vote in candidates who were sympathetic to their cause; especially since a great many Black Americans effectively weren’t able to vote at that time.

However, Black Americans had long used other democratic methods to affect public policy. Beginning in the early years of the twentieth century, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, used the democratic right of freedom of the press. Elected political leaders were not addressing the epidemic of lynchings of Black Americans, so the NAACP sent journalists to investigate. We think disinformation is a new phenomenon, but disinformation about lynchings was incredibly widespread a hundred years ago. To counter disinformation, the NAACP published verifiable facts in their own periodicals, and presented those facts to elected leaders. It took decades, but gradually they were able to reduce the number of lynchings. And the NAACP was able to run their own news outlet because of another democratic right, the right of free association. By banding together and growing a large organization, Black Americans and their White allies were able fund their own journalists, and to make their views heard in the cacophony of a mass democracy.

In the two decades after Langston Hughes wrote that poem, Black Americans continued to use a variety of democratic methods to make their views known. During the Civil Rights struggle of the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, Black Americans used the right of free association to rally together to demand the rights that were legally due them. They used the free press to get the truth out the discrimination they faced, not just in the South, but here in the North as well. They used the courts to seek judicial redress, and while they lost many court battles, they also prevailed in such landmark cases as Brown vs. Board of Education.

It is worth noting that all of this democratic activity was supported by voluntary associations like the NAACP. These were not lone individuals taking their individual case to the courts, but rather groups of people working together in concert. So, for example, there’s this myth that Rosa Parks acted on her own when she refused to give up her seat for a White woman on an Alabama bus. But she was not working alone. She was part of a much larger movement. She was helping the NAACP with a larger strategy when she refused to give up her seat. Because she was part of a local movement that, Black Americans were able to band together to boycott the Montgomery city buses for the year after her arrest, and this year-long organized boycott forced political leaders to end segregation on city buses.

Democratic change does not come about though heroic individualism. Democratic change comes about as a result of people coming together, and working together. We are constantly told that the most important thing in a democracy is to vote, but this is false. Voting represents the absolute minimum effort an individual can make in a democracy. This is not to say the right to vote is unimportant — it is important, and everyone should have the right to vote. But if your only democratic effort is to spend fifteen minutes twice a year casting your vote, and maybe another couple of hours a year attending town meeting, you as an individual shouldn’t expect to have much of an impact.

Yes, your vote matters — but it only matters when you exercise your other democratic rights and responsibilities. This is what Gil Scott-Heron was getting at in the second reading. I’m going to read that second reading for you again, in its entirety, because I think it’s so important. Gil Scott-Heron said: “I think that the Black Americans have been the only real die-hard Americans here, because we’re the only who have carried the process through…. Everyone else has sort of skipped stages. We’re the ones who marched, we’re the ones who carried the Bible, we’re the ones who carried the flag, we’re the ones who tried to go through the courts — and being born American didn’t seem to matter. Because we were born American but we still had to fight for what we were looking for.”

People say we’re facing a crisis in democracy. I feel that crisis has come about because too many people have reduced their participation in democracy to the absolute minimum of voting, and nothing more. Too many Americans like their comfort more than they like democracy. We Americans have kind of abandoned democracy. We are comfortable sitting at home, so we stay at home. Fewer and fewer Americans belong to groups where cooperate with other people.

Now if you’re here in the Meetinghouse this morning, you get to pat yourself on the back because you made the effort to get out of the house, and schlep down here, and attend this service. But honestly, the service itself isn’t all that important; what’s actually important is that we came down here to meet with like-minded people and work on projects together. We’re here participating in a democratically run organization. We’re actually doing democracy, in a small way, just by being here.

And those of you who are watching the livestream, you also get to pat yourself on the back. You made the effort to stay off social media for an hour, to not play video games for an hour, and participate in this community. That might not seem like it’s important, but it is. We count the number of people who log on to our livestream each week, and it makes a difference for First Parish to be able to say you’re another person who’s part of this democratically-run organization. Just as the NAACP relied on support from members at a distance, so do we.

The NAACP offers a good example for us to follow in this crisis in democracy. The NAACP is a voluntary association; it consists of people who freely associate together in a democratically-run organization to support each other and to affect public policy. The NAACP is a specific type of voluntary association: it has a national coordinating body, and it has local face-to-face groups that meet regularly. That’s actually the same organizational structure we Unitarian Universalists have. This is an especially powerful way for individuals to join together to affect public policy. Other examples of federated voluntary membership associations include the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Rifle Association, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and so on. You might not agree with the politics of these example organizations, but you have to admit that each of them has been effective in its own unique way. And each of these organizations actually serves to strengthen democracy, by amplifying the voice of individuals in a mass democracy where they might otherwise be lost in the noise.

(Obviously, there are also ways to participate more directly in government. Some of us have the necessary skills to serve on town boards, run for elected office, and so on. But not everyone can fill these roles, which is why I’m emphasizing participating in voluntary associations.)

Two days from now, we’re facing an especially divisive presidential election. (Our congregation is divided, by the way; we have both Republicans and Democrats.) The way the polls are running, no matter who wins, roughly half the electorate will be unhappy with the results of the election.

So what should you do if your side loses on Tuesday?

Well, I’ve heard people say all kinds of things. But I suggest we listen to the opinion of a recent Haitian immigrant, as we heard it in the third reading this morning:

“Asked why they chose the United States, Rodrick [the recent immigrant] answered, ‘The reason we chose America is to get stability that’s missing in other countries.’”

Remember, this is a Black man speaking, someone who knows full well that there continues to be racial discrimination against Black men here in the United States. But Rodrick also understands that there is a stability here in the United States. Our democracy that may be in crisis, but our democracy remains surprisingly robust. Much of that robustness comes from our freedom to associate, from our ability to create vibrant organizations that help affect public policy.

If your preferred candidate loses in the coming week, rather than ranting and raving on social media (or in person), I suggest that you exercise your democratic right to participate in a voluntary association. Instead of ranting and raving, go join the local branch of the League of Women Voters — there’s a branch in Hingham, and a branch in Plymouth. Go join the Brockton branch of the NAACP. Or if you already belong to some group that influences politics locally and nationally, rededicate yourself to that group, and then go join another group. Mourning the loss is a waste of time; get organized instead.

If your preferred candidate wins in the coming week, once again, please stay off social media. Beyond that, even if your candidate wins, you still need to exercise your democratic right to participate in a voluntary association that influences politics locally and nationally. Our problems are not going to go away just because your one presidential candidate wins this one election. Celebrating victory is a waste of time; get organized instead.

Gil Scott-Heron said of his fellow Black Americans, “we were born American but we still had to fight for what we were looking for.” That has actually been true of all Americans. Democracy is never a finished product. We have always had to fight to keep our democracy. Human beings have always been fallible beings, and because we constantly make mistakes, we constantly have to fight for our ideals. Democracy is hard work, and it is never-ending work. The outcome of the upcoming election isn’t going to change that, no matter who wins.

I hope you can hold on to that thought during this anxious time. Don’t let the anxiety get you down. Hold on to the thought that you can freely associate with others, and you can continue to work for accountability and democratic change no matter what the outcome of the election. Remember Rodrick who came here because it’s so much better here than in his country. Hold on to our highest democratic ideals. Continue to work for those high democratic ideals.

A Religious Liberal Looks at the Economy

Opening words

from “To His Newborn Great-Grandson,” by W. E. B. DuBois

The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you, and the world’s need of that work. With this satisfaction, and this need, life is heaven or as near heaven as you can get. Without this — with work which you despise, which bores you, — with work which the world does not need — this life is hell.

Readings

The first reading comes from the New Revised Standard Version of the Christian scriptures, the Book of Mark, chapter 10, verses 17-26:

“As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and ”’ He said to him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’ Jesus, looking at him … and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When he heard this, the man was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

“Then Jesus looked around and said to his followers, ‘How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ And his followers were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, ‘How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ They were greatly astounded and said to one another, ‘Then who can be saved?’”

The second reading comes from Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden, from the first chapter, titled “Economy”:

“For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labor of my hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living. The whole of my winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study. I have thoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses were in proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my income, for I was obliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe, accordingly, and I lost my time into the bargain. As I did not teach for the good of my fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. I have tried trade; but I found that it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil. I was actually afraid that I might by that time be doing what is called a good business. When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for a living, some sad experience in conforming to the wishes of friends being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely I could do, and its small profits might suffice, — for my greatest skill has been to want but little, — so little capital it required, so little distraction from my wonted moods, I foolishly thought. While my acquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I contemplated this occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills all summer to pick the berries which came in my way, and thereafter carelessly dispose of them; so, to keep the flocks of Admetus [add MAY tose]. I also dreamed that I might gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens to such villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods, even to the city, by hay-cart loads. But I have since learned that trade curses everything it handles; and though you trade in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade attaches to the business.”

Sermon — “A Religious Liberal Looks at the Economy”

Back in 1992, Jim Carville was a strategist working in the presidential campaign for the Democratic candidate, Bill Clinton. To help his campaign workers promote a uniform message, Jim Carville posted a sign in the Clinton campaign headquarters with the three main points he wanted to convey to voters. Using Carville’s exact wording, those three points were as follows: Don’t forget healthcare; Change versus more of the same; The economy, stupid.

Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Thirty-two years later, these points could still be used by either of the major presidential campaigns. The last two points — Change versus more of the same; The economy, stupid — remain especially relevant. Indeed, I’d argue that the last point — “The economy, stupid” — probably motivates more voters than anything else.

Because the economy continues to be so important in our democracy, I thought it made sense for me to devote a sermon to the economy. However, I’m not an economist. Nor am I adept at talking about American politics. So this won’t be a political sermon. Instead I’m going to try to talk, from my point of view as a religious liberal, about some of the moral implications of economics.

To begin with, let’s consider the New England approach to doing business, as I experienced it growing up in a New England town during the late twentieth century. In those days, before the big box stores and multinational conglomerates took over, and before people bought everything online, many businesses were still local or regional. The most reputable of those businesses had a guiding philosophy of doing well by doing good. So, for example, during the 1980s I spent seven years working for a family-owned lumber yard. The family which owned the lumber yard went into the lumber business to make money. At the same time, they knew they had to provide goods and services that were needed in the community. They also felt it was their duty to provide stable middle class jobs that allowed their employees to buy a house and raise a family.

I don’t mean to romanticize those New England businesses from another day. The lumberyard where I worked, for example, was pretty sexist, and worker safety wasn’t always at the top of their list of priorities. But the best of those businesses did their best to follow the ideal of doing well by doing good; and there are still some businesses today that still follow that ideal.

Keeping that ideal in mind, let’s consider the story told about Jesus of Nazareth that we heard in the first reading.

The story opens by telling us that Jesus was about to set out on one of his travels through the countryside around Jerusalem. A young man approaches him, and asks this famous spiritual teacher what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus lists some of Moses’s teachings from the Torah: don’t murder anyone; don’t have sex with someone who is someone else’s spouse; don’t steal, lie, or cheat; take care of your parents. Upon hearing this, the young man feels complacent, for he has in fact done all these things. To puncture his complacency, Jesus tells this wealthy young man that there’s one more thing he must do: he must sell everything he owns, give it to the poor, and join Jesus on those travels through the countryside to bring teaching of spirituality and justice to all people. Upon hearing this one last requirement, the rich young man walks away grieving. As he walks away, Jesus turns to his followers, and tells them how difficult it will be for wealthy people to enter the kingdom of God.

Let me pause for just a moment to consider what Jesus meant when he spoke of the “kingdom of God.” Today’s mainstream Christians are sure they know exactly what the kingdom of God is. They assure us that the kingdom of God is some kind of afterlife where human beings get to go if they are good Christians. By “good Christian,” they mean people who belong to their Christian denomination, and profess belief in the orthodox dogma of their denomination. However, theirs is an anachronistic understanding of Jesus’s words. Jesus was a Jew, not a Christian. Nor did Jesus profess belief in any kind of Christian orthodoxy; there was no Christian orthodoxy until a couple of centuries after Jesus had died.

If you read the Book of Mark with an open mind — that is, if you do not cloak Jesus in anachronistic religiosity, but consider him as a spiritual thinker of depth and insight — you can see that when Jesus says “the kingdom of God,” he was not referring to an afterlife. Jesus felt that the kingdom of God is happening here and now, all around us. Nor is the kingdom of God limited to human beings, for Jesus tells us that not a sparrow falls but that God is aware of it. The Kingdom of God is, to use the words of theologian Bernard Loomer, nothing less than the “world conceived of as an indefinitely extended complex of interrelated, interdependent units of reality” — those of us who are not theologians call this the Web of Life, and it includes both the human and the non-human worlds. When even a tiny bird like a sparrow dies, that death affects the whole kingdom, because each being is connected to every other being.

To return to the story: When the rich young man approached Jesus, he faced a dilemma. Jesus and his followers hung out with people from a wide range of social classes, ranging from well-to-do merchants, to destitute beggars. Jesus saw that all persons were equally a part of the kingdom of God, and so Jesus maintained equality of relationships with all persons. The rich young man, on the other hand, liked his wealth, and he liked the high status his wealth gave to him. He followed all the teachings of the Torah to the letter, but his wealth prevented him from completely following the spirit of the Torah; or to put in contemporary terms, his love of his wealth prevented him from participating fully in the interdependent web of life. Seeing this, Jesus challenged him: Would the rich young man sell all his possessions and come follow Jesus? How attached was he to his wealth and possessions? Was he more attached to his wealth than he was to the interdependent web of life?

The followers of Jesus somehow manage to miss all these undercurrents. They are baffled by what Jesus says. If a rich person who has followed all the teachings of the Torah can’t enter the kingdom of God, then who can? Jesus tries to explain to them using a vivid metaphor to describe an almost impossible task. He says it will be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to become part of the kingdom of God.

Henry David Thoreau took up exactly this question in his book Walden. In this book, Thoreau describes how built himself a cabin a mile from the nearest house, and lived off the land. Walden is full of passages like the one we heard in the second reading, which ends: “I have since learned that trade curses everything it handles; and though you trade in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade attaches to the business.”

Because of passages like this, many people believe that Thoreau was telling us that we should all go off into the woods, plant a field of beans like he did, and stay out of the money economy. These same people then take great delight in pointing out that Thoreau did not in fact live completely on his own. They love to tell us that his mother did his laundry, and that he would often eat dinner with his family. Because of this, these people dismiss Thoreau. But these critics of Thoreau gloss over some key facts showing us that Thoreau’s actual message was more complex. Thoreau’s cabin was a station on the Underground Railroad, and one reason he went home to dinner was to attend gathering of anti-slavery activists. And Thoreau was also an important part of the family business of manufacturing pencils; he had to go home regularly because his work made an essential contribution to the family income.

Nor did Thoreau say that everyone should go build a cabin in the woods. He used his two year sojourn in the cabin at Walden Pond as an experiment. He wanted to that we could detach ourselves from our possessions; for when we allow ourselves to be governed by our money and our possessions, we lose sight of what Thoreau called “higher laws.” He was especially sensitive to the way that slavery in the United States warped the morality of the national economy. New Englanders liked to pretend they had nothing to do with slavery, but the Mexican American War showed him how northerners were happily complicit with southern slaveholders. Thoreau put it this way: “It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself.” Jesus used the image of a camel trying to get through the eye of a needle to illustrate how attachment to wealth could disconnect people from the interdependent web of existence. Thoreau used a different metaphor, a metaphor of enslavement, and he talked of “higher laws” rather than the “kingdom of God.” But he was making the same point: too much wealth can disconnect us from the web of life.

This brings us to the present day, and to the present election cycle. When we listen to politicians talking about the economy — when we ourselves talk about the economy as it relates to the election — what exactly do we talk about? Are we talking about what Thoreau called “higher laws,” what Jesus called the “kingdom of God,” what we might call the interdependent web of existence? Or do our political conversations somehow fall short?

One area where the political conversations of our own day usually fall short is that we reduce the economy to jobs. If everyone has a job — so goes this rhetorical turn — then the voters will be happy with the politicians. But it is not just jobs that we human beings want and need. This has been true since ancient times. The Torah tells us, “one does not live by bread alone” [Duet. 8:3, NRSV]. Yes, we want work that allows us to put bread on the table. But we humans need more than that; we need to know how we are connected to the rest of humanity, and to the entire interdependent web of existence.

Furthermore, not every job brings us that sense of connection to something larger than our selves. In my seven years working in the lumberyard, and five years working for a carpenter, I was lucky enough to have decent jobs that allowed me to bread on the table. But those jobs didn’t provide much opportunity for attending to “higher laws.” So I was grateful for the hour each week when I could attend a Unitarian Universalist worship service. Maybe I didn’t always pay much attention to the sermon, but the service as a whole gave me a time and place to reconnect with something greater than myself. The social hour following the service was equally valuable as a time when I could talk with others about something besides my job. This may sound trivial, but spending a couple of hours once a week thinking about something other than carpentry helped me to stay connected to what Thoreau called the “higher laws.” We all have a spiritual need to feel connected to a greater whole.

The political conversations of our own day also fall short if they fail to make a strong connection between the economy and justice. This was true in Thoreau’s day, too, as some politicians chose to ignore the fact that at that time the economy of the entire United States depended upon race-based chattel slavery. While many free White northerners may have found slavery to be reprehensible, they too were held in thrall by an economic system which was rooted in slavery. Their comfort and their relative wealth kept them from ending slavery — kept them from paying attention to the demands of the higher laws, kept them from a full awareness of the interdependence of all human beings.

This helps us better understand what Jesus was trying to tell the rich young man who wanted access to the kingdom of God. That rich young man was not in control of his wealth and possessions; he was controlled by them. His highest duty was to his wealth, not to his higher self. Because of this, even though he lived a seemingly moral and blameless life, divinity was not easily able to stir within him.

Or perhaps Thoreau and Jesus both set higher standards than most of us can live up to. Selling all our possessions and following an itinerant preacher is not possible for most of us. Building a cabin a mile from the nearest neighbor and growing all our own food is not possible for most of us. This is especially true if we are responsible for other people — children, elders, spouses. But we should not get caught up in the specifics of these stories. Both Jesus and Thoreau stated their case in extreme terms to grab our attention. Each of them, in their own way, wanted us to fully understand the truth of that old saying from the Torah: human beings need more than food to live; we need a higher life as well. They wanted us to reflect on how we are disconnected from the higher laws. What is keeping us from realizing our essential connection with the interdependent web of existence?

Somehow we all need to find ways to remember that we are connected to all other people; that we are connected to something greater than ourselves; and that we have it in ourselves to make this world a better place. Thus when we say that it’s only about “the economy, stupid” — when we make it sound like the economy is a matter of selfish gain for each individual — we are doing a disservice to ourselves and to our whole society. The economy is more than just a job for you and a job for me. The economy should also be a means for helping all persons to lead better lives. We do not live by jobs alone. The economy should be a means for making this a better world. We should realize that our economic policies need to be governed by “higher laws,” that is, by high moral standards and by the ideals of justice.

Not that we’ll always agree among ourselves. Nor will we agree with every politician’s moral standards, or their notions of justice. But we can demand that whenever we as a people consider economic policy, we must always consider morality and justice. We must always consider higher laws. We must always understand that economics means we are connected to the vast web of all existence.

Photo of a whiteboard hanging in an office. — A photo allegedly taken of a white board in Bill Clinton’s campaign headquarters in May, 1992, showing Jim Carville’s now-famous saying, “The economy, stupid.” Good campaign strategy, maybe, but there’s more to the world than “the economy, stupid.”