“UUs Making Change in Massachusetts”
Sermon by Lynn Holbein
September 2, 2007

My talk today is about two things:

• Two different ways to view God – let’s call them a fundamentalist Christian view and a UU view -- and how they might affect our attitudes toward social action, and
• A way in which Massachusetts UUs can work smarter, not harder for social justice.
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My mother is in a retirement home in Virginia. She’s totally bedridden and pretty senile, and she’s taken care of, in rotation, by three women, all relatives who were originally from Ghana. All three are deeply Christian, and are incredibly kind and patient with my mother.

Three weeks ago, I was visiting my mother, and I got into a conversation with one of the women, Regina, whose son recently returned from duty in Iraq. “What do you think of the war in Iraq?” I asked.

“It’s God’s will,” she said. Pause. “What do you mean?” I asked.

She replied, “Well, you know in the Bible, especially the Old Testament, that they were always having wars. It’s no different now. And you’ve read about the Second Coming of Christ. Lots of signs of the Second Coming are already happening, like children disobeying their parents. We don’t know when the Second Coming will be – it could be in ten years, or twenty, or 1,000 – but we know that the Christians will go to war with the Muslims and defeat them.”

“And what do you think of George Bush?” I asked.

“Well, he was chosen.” “Chosen?” “Well, think about it, there were millions of Christians praying in thousands of churches that the right man would be chosen, and God chose him.”

“But what can we do about problems if it’s all God’s will?” I asked. “Pray!” was her answer.

If you’re thinking to yourself, “But that’s just one woman, and she’s not an average American,” I can tell you that my first cousin believes the same thing. My cousin is white, and middle class, and we grew up together in Alexandria, Virginia. She believes that events in the Middle East are unfolding according to God’s plan and will lead, sooner or later, to the Second Coming of Christ.

How many of you are aware of the “Left Behind” series? It’s made up of a dozen books, which sold 20 million copies. In it, the Second Coming begins as true Christians are “raptured” up to heaven – abruptly disappearing, leaving their clothes in a pile where they had been – to be in heaven with God. After the “Rapture,” the earth, wherer only non-believers remain, descends into war, famine, and chaos, truly “hell on earth.”

This scares me for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that I figure if this happens, I’ll be down on earth in the war and famine and chaos, with the “bad people.”

Here’s what got me thinking: If you considered yourself a True Christian, and if you believed in the Second Coming and the Rapture, how would you act? If you believe that what’s happening in the Middle East is God’s will, and that you and the other “good Christians” would be saved before anything bad happened, wouldn’t you be more likely to vote for politicians who act provocatively in the Middle East, making this Final War more likely? Might you, and millions of voters like you, make the end of the world a self-fulfilling prophecy?

And what about social justice issues? Let’s take global warming, for instance. If you thought the world was coming to an end, and what was happening was God’s will, would you care about global warming, and do something about it? Instead of long-term solutions to the world’s big problems, would you just concentrate on individual acts of kindness, like a good Christian, and then pray?

I think, as UUs, we need to understand more about what this large swatch of Christians think, because it may be a big factor in how our country is going and our many voters are voting. I don’t know what we can do about it, but I think it’s very important that we talk about it, and understand it, and I hope we will do that at FUSN.
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The way I see the world, and God, is different.

I believe in God. I believe that God is the force of creativity and love and life that made the universe. I say a prayer of thanks every evening. But I don’t believe God controls his and her creation. Have you heard the song “From a Distance”? The words are “God is watching us – from a distance.”

God, the creator of this beautiful world, is on the side of social justice, because that’s the way that creation will survive and thrive – if the world is peaceful and harmonious and fair.

So, when we act for social justice, we are in touch with the God within us. Narcissism is a little like junk good. I’m not knocking junk food. A little junk food tastes great, but if that’s all you eat, you start to feel lazy and fat and bad about yourself. Helping other people and working for the greater good feels like a healthy diet – it helps you stand up straight, and look people in the eye.

At least that’s the way it makes me feel. Since 1981 – when I heard Dr. Helen Caldicott speak in this very sanctuary, and I first started working for nuclear disarmament – I’ve done about 10 to 20 hours of work every week for social justice. It helps me feel good about myself.

I want to say a word about the importance of this church community in supporting social justice work this mine. Working to improve society is lonely – you’re trying to get society to move from here to there, and society does not want to move. You can become unpopular, and you can feel a little martyred, which causes you to burn out. The antidote is a community, like this one, that supports you. You have friends who are doing similar work, and even those who aren’t active appreciate what you’re doing. I can honestly say that I couldn’t have worked for social justice for the past 26 years without the FUSN community.
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Which brings me to the last thing I want to talk about: a new kind of social justice work that’s going on here in Massachusetts, and which you are invited to join. There are 20,000 UUs in Massachusetts out of 200,000 UUs in America --- one in every 10 UUs in America live here. There are 140 UU churches in Massachusetts – more than twice the number of churches in the second largest UU state, California, and seven times as many UU churches as the average state.

We Unitarians do a lot of social justice work ---- BUT we don’t coordinate that work with each other! There are people at FUSN who are very worried about global warming, but I bet they have no idea who is involved at the UU churches in the neighboring towns of Waltham, Brookline or Wellesley. Imagine how much more effective, and less burnt out they would be if they knew about each other and weren’t re-inventing the wheel!

The organization that’s trying to change that fragmentation is called UU Mass. Action – which stands for the Unitarian Universalist Massachusetts Action Network. I founded it a year ago, with the help of James Ford and several other members of the congregation, and I’m President of the Board. It’s a statewide organization now, with an Executive Director and support from the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, dozens of churches, and many individuals like you and me.

UU Mass. Action has two goals:
• To help UUs who are already involved in social action projects – or want to be – to know about each other, so they can work together. And
• To enable UUs across Massachusetts to choose three issues to work on together at the state level.

So far, the issues that have been chosen – by survey at the website, www.uumassaction.org -- are

• #1 Global Warming (the hands-down winner across the state), and
• #2 Hunger and Poverty.
• Until June, UU Mass. Action also worked on Equal Marriage. One hundred UUs visited their legislators at the First Annual UU Lobby Day, and we were successful! The constitutional challenge to equal marriage was defeated, and we no longer need to worry about that issue at the State House for several years.
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In closing, working for social justice is a joy to me because I feel I’m fulfilling God’s purpose for me here on earth, and because I am lucky enough to have FUSN as a supportive community. I hope you will join me, and thanks for listening!