WHAT SHALL WE DO? Spirituality and Politics

A Homily by
James Ishmael Ford
15 December 2002

Today I will be speaking a little of our style of social and political engagement as a people of faith. I will describe by my best lights why we do what we do, a little history, a little theology. And then, in that celebration of our congregationalism, in that acknowledgement of where the deep truly resides, each of us, bounded only by the restraints of time and respect, will be invited to speak to this issue. So, please, pay attention. There will be a test.

Probably everyone here knows that old story about us. The Unitarian Universalist parents were walking into the backyard for a neighborhood party when they overheard their daughter answering another child’s question, "What religion are you?" To which their little girl replied, "I’m not sure. But I think we’re League of Women Voters."

Our political involvement in both strands of our faith, Unitarianism and Universalism, has been strong for generations. Indeed strong isn’t strong enough to speak of our commitment to social engagement. Throughout our history, from our classic Christian Unitarian and Universalist origins right through to our broad spiritual perspectives of today, we’ve always been deeply, passionately politically engaged.

In the eighteenth century many proto-Unitarians and Universalists were radicals and revolutionaries. By our contemporary lights more than a couple of us were terrorists. Each of these, our spiritual ancestors, were seeking in their own way a new nation grounded in many of the same principles that were forming our religious movement, pursuing with our very life-blood as one of our number wrote "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

We continued as the years passed to be deeply involved first in the causes of abolition, and later in women’s rights. Much of the leadership for suffrage came from Unitarians and Universalists. As we know in the nineteenth century our denominations were the first to ordain women. And now today we Unitarian Universalists are involved in any number of social and political concerns as our heritage.

We continue to push that proverbial envelope. While we’re far from that time of racial equity at least today we are the first majority white denomination to have elected a person of color our denominational head. Our commitments to women’s rights are fierce, as are our assertions of the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons. And now, as anyone who attended our last denominational General Assembly knows, we find the questions and ethics of polyamory are being discussed among us. We push to know and be open and compassionate. We seek ever greater congruence between our deep intuitions of what is and can be and our choices in the world.

This tradition continues here at the First Unitarian Society in Newton. The litany of our engagement is long. First we’re involved in those primary concerns of life--clothing and food and shelter. We in this Society founded the Newton Food Pantry. We are substantive supporters of the Greater Boston Food Bank. For over a decade on the second Saturday of each month members of our community work with members of Myrtle Baptist to prepare four hundred meals for people at various shelters in the greater Boston area.

We gather clothing, household goods, toiletries, toys and books, between four hundred and five hundred boxes a year, distributed to Second Step, the Women’s Lunch Place, the UU Urban Ministry and Stand High/Stand United (which we co-founded and continue to support in a variety of ways).

The list goes on. We in our community support the education of two convicts. We are the primary support for a small AIDS orphanage in Africa. Five times a year we have a "Second Collection," most recently Second Step and Elliot House, projects for battered women and people dealing with mental illness right here in Newton, averaging sixteen hundred dollars a collection.

Nor do we limit ourselves to gathering goods or money. We throw ourselves into action. We provide leadership in issues of ecological concern, speak out on behalf of a living wage for all, and address the questions of war. Last year our congregation provided a call to our denomination for a continuing struggle against world and indeed local issues of slavery, of involuntary servitude that continues to mar human dignity and possibility. We are the center for our denominational concern with this issue.

We are engaged. No doubt, no doubt. But the question for today is why are we so driven to social and political engagement? And, perhaps, what are its limits? Are we, as some occasionally assert, the Democratic Party at prayer? I really don’t think so. I suggest, as I alluded earlier, our deep motives are found within an intuition of how the world really is, and how we need be involved with that reality. And that intuition of the real includes challenges to all status quo, including the dominant paradigms of contemporary two-party politics.

Now I find this intuition is beautifully expressed in the first and the seventh of our contemporary Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes. The first is about individuals. We uphold, as it says in the Principles and Purposes "the inherent worth and dignity of every person." The seventh of these Principles and Purposes call us to "respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part."

I suggest while these assertions really are not part of a creedal statement, a test of belief we must embrace to be members of a Unitarian Universalist congregation, it is a fairly accurate description of that deep intuition many, almost certainly most of us hold.

If so, this perspective is very important. We should reflect upon it. Indeed, I feel, within our coming to ever deeper understanding of these two particular and perhaps apparently contradictory assertions about who and what we are, we find what we need to act in ever more open and graceful and compassionate ways.

The first about worth and dignity of the individual is an assertion about us, you and me. Open hearing this we often, to my mind correctly, go quickly to such questions as "but what about Hitler?" or in our times "so, what about Osama bin Ladin?" The point here is not at first the very important question of what one does with one’s life, but rather about how we start out, what is our possibility?

This is a statement about every child born into the world, whether here in Newton or in Israel or Palestine or India or China or Uganda, wherever. Each child born into this world is precious and unique. It is not overstating it to say each child is the hope of our world. I suggest we hold this intuition commonly among us, somewhere within our consciousness, as a truth. Our birthright as human beings is possibility.

But we can’t stop there. This isn’t just a sentimental statement, something sweet. I suggest we find the clarification of that truth in the seventh principle. Each child, each of us in fact, whether you or me or George Bush or Osama bin Ladin, are birthed out of, sustained by, and will return to a common source. That source of us all is the web. This image of the web points to how we are made. It is a description of our genes and our historical conditions. It speaks of our fundamental intimacy. We are bound up together more profoundly than we can say.

Now here is my assertion about these two things. The individual and the web are each aspects of the other. Without the web there is no individual. But there’s more. Without the individual there is no web. This dynamic is reality. Each informs the other, each becomes the other in mysterious and beautiful and terrible ways.

In our twin knowing, like having the binocular vision of two eyes, we see how the world really is—at once everything in the world, and particularly we human beings, are precious and unique. And, everything is woven out of every other thing. We are autonomous, but not completely. We are interdependent, but not completely. This dynamic is the real.

Out of this, as we come to understand this profound connection between the individual and the web, we discover as naturally as we breathe that we must act. Within this dynamic reality we find how we are creative creatures, with a need to engage. And so for us as Unitarian Universalists, with a deep intuition of these twin truths, we find our spiritual lives are lives of engagement, of hope.

Well, that’s how I see the matter at hand, why we as Unitarian Universalists are so socially and politically engaged. But today is a day of conversation. And here is the test. My question to you, teachers and guides for us all: How do you see the actions of our denomination and congregation as expressions of faith? How do you see our social and political engagement as assertions of our spirituality?

(Congregational reflections)

In closing, let me remind you of those words we’ve heard since childhood, of a call so deep and profound, how can it not stir the soul and birth hope into this suffering world? The words of Isaiah. "The spirit of God has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, to comfort all who mourn, to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations, the devastations of many generations. You shall be named ministers of our God."

Amen.