Frank CarpenterChanning Memorial Church, Newport, RI
Last revised: March 6, 1997.
READING: George Washington's Letter to the Hebrew Congregation In Newport, 1790.
SERMON:
This is the Sunday before Election Day, 1996. Whether it will be a memorable election is anyone's guess, though with many people talking about bridges to the past and future, this election day seems like a bridge too far. Religion is becoming more mixed up with elections. This morning I review various accommodations between religion and government.
A memorable moment for me in the mix of faith and politics comes from Al Franken. The cable network Comedy Central has been one of my sources of insight into this year's political process. Al Franken has been one of their regular correspondents. During the Republican Convention, Franken attempted to interview Pat Robertson, leader of the Christian Coalition. According to Franken, Robertson had said that it was impossible for lesbians to have babies. Franken wanted to know how Robertson had come to this conclusion. After Robertson had palmed off the question, security guards prevented Franken from getting close to him again.
The difference between the secular Al Franken, a Clinton humorist, and the orthodox Robertson was a clear illustration that in America today, we have one party, the party of the old time religion, and anther party which is secular. Well before we heard of 'culture wars,' historian of American religions -- and Unitarian Universalist -- Sidney Mead was commenting on this division. In his THE OLD TIME RELIGION IN THE BRAVE NEW WORLD (1977) he argued that "traditional forms of orthodoxy are incompatible with the principles underlying the structures of the Republic." This division is coming more and more to our attention.
Wherever the distinction between the saved and the damned is more important than the will of the people, voting is a daring act. The simple act of voting on this coming Tuesday has its roots in the Enlightenment revolt against absolutism in religion. Let us not be confused that this revolt is finished, over. It is not. One of the memorable events for Rhode Islanders this election season was a comment from a member of the great Catholic political dynasty, the Kennedy family. RI Representative, Patrick Kennedy, called for the Roman Catholic Church to cross that bridge too far.
Talking about the role of women in our contemporary society, Kennedy said it was time for Roman Catholics to ordain women. The Providence Journal for Oct. 27th reports him as saying, "I hope in the near term the church crawls out of the Stone Age and lives out what I believe is the message of the Gospel, and that is that everyone is equal."
Our very right to vote and our secular state results from many generations crawling out of the Stone Age, away from the crushing absolutism of the Vatican. Our reading this morning came from a letter which President George Washington wrote to the Hebrew Congregation here in Newport, Touro Synagogue, the oldest synagogue in the United States. He assured them that he considered Jews to have full rights of citizenship in this country, that being a Christian, that being saved, was not part of citizenship. Washington then went on to hold this up for others to imitate.
We don't usually take this long a perspective. Let us take a long look. Today it is women who have the door slammed in their faces. Once it was monarch's. In the ongoing struggle for temporal power, Pope Gregory VII excommunicated the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV of Germany -- in 1073. In those days, Henry had to crawl through Alpine snows and lie supplicant before the gates of the papal castle before he was received back into the church. Even today, the politician remains supplicant, as when Patrick Kennedy phoned Bishop Gileneau in Providence to apologize for his harsh way of stating his views.
The struggle for power over one another between Pope and Emperor was a major driving force in Western history. To divert the energies of kings, the Papacy invented the crusade and with it the enemy, the infidel. After going off to Palestine and attempting to bring Jerusalem back into the fold, the next target became the conversion of the Africans to Christianity. So began the African slave trade. The same rationalizations lead to the Papal sanctification of the European invasion of America. In 1552, Bartolome de Las Casas wrote that the Spanish invasion had killed 15 million indigenous peoples.
Is it so surprising that at the time of our American Revolution, at the time of Washington's letter to Newport's Jews, there would be this fear of absolutism? Today the CEO of Intel tells us that "Only the Paranoid Survive." Is it a new message?
Patrick Kennedy suggested that it is time to crawl out from the Stone Age, yes! But a correction is in order if we are to be exact: It is only the dark ages that many need to crawl out of. It is only a bridge of about one thousand years which needs to be crossed, not ten thousand years. The tradition of voting asserts the authority of the individual, over the papacy and any who would exercise absolute rule.
Turning to other major faith traditions, away from Christendom, we see that there are other ways of faith and politics interfacing. Because of this rebellion against church power, we in the West have a different sense of the relations between church and state than in rest of the world where religious authority was not so absolute.
Looking at China, we need to be careful not to project our accustomed categories onto that culture. It would be easy to think that traditional China's official religion was Confucianism, just as Western Christendom was Roman Catholic. The founder of this tradition, Confucius, seems more a moral than religious teacher. His teachings are mainly aphorisms, such as, Tsu King asked "What would you say of the person who was liked by all his fellow townsmen?" Confucius responded, "that is not sufficient ..." About 130 B.C. Confucian texts became basic training for government officials. And this remained true until 1905.
Was Confucianism the official state religion of traditional China. Peking was not Puritan Boston nor were there any evil ayatollahs. A professor of mine at M.I.T. puts this in perspective. The son of Methodist missionaries in China, he grew up there and speaks from personal experience. Huston Smith writes:
In India and the West religions are exclusive, if not competitive -- it makes no sense to think of someone as being simultaneously a Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew, or even a Buddhist and a Hindu simultaneously. China arranged things differently. Traditionally, every Chinese was Confusion in ethics and public life, Taoist in private life and hygiene, and Buddhist at the time of death, with a healthy dash of shaministic folk religion thrown in along the way. As someone has put the point: Every Chinese wears a Confucian hat, Taoist robes, and Buddhist sandals.Talking with many Unitarian Universalists, I find this approach has appeal. Especially for interfaith families. On Yom Kippur they celebrate as Jews would, on Easter, as Christians.
Turning to the Middle East, we see a more familiar picture. Being 'exclusive' is a problem. In Israel there is a similar conflict between secular parties and orthodox parties. In Israel, one has to be Orthodox to get married. A Palestinian state is seen by one side as a practical matter: land for peace. The other as a restoration of the Kingdom of David and the Temple of Solomon.
Islam seems different in some ways to us. Its founder, Muhammad, let victorious armies in the desert. Christianity's founder, when asked where were his legions, responded, "My kingdom is not of this world." He called for us to give unto Caesar what is Caesar's. and God, God's. Our particular Christen, Western point of view has made it easy for Islamic people's to see our human rights discourse as the language of imperialism. And it is has been as a response to the modern world that fundamentalism has arisen. University of Chicago Professor, Martin E Marty remarks, "Thus the rise and salience of Islamic fundamentalism may be considered as part of a worldwide quest for authenticity and for a stable communal and personal identity in an age of 'high modernity.'"
In many areas of our globe, high modernity has meant mainly fast food. In India the Bharatiya Janata Party, has run on a platform of Hindu nationalism. In 1992 they rode to prominence on the issue of a Mosque built on Hindu holy site in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya. Before coming to power in Indian, the Bharatiya Janata Party complained that India culture was endangered by American junk food, agitated against Coca-cola, Pepsi and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Once standing for the great ideals of equality and liberty, we are now seen as the purveyors of junk food.
The "West," North Atlantic culture, emerged in rebellion to the absolutism of the Papacy, so the rest of the world may emerge in rebellion to the West. If so, they will not identify with our separation of church and state, but see it as part of the problem.
Whatever possible misconceptions, George Washington's "policy worthy of imitation" remains central to our nation and to our faith. The founder of American Unitarianism grew up only a block away from Touro Synagogue. The same time that Washington sent his letter to the Newport's Hebrews, he also sat at the Channing dinner table with the ten year old William Ellery Channing. Channing carried this message to the wider world. Today it lies inscribed in the Purposes and Principles of the UUA. There we read of the "right of conscience and the use of the democratic process.."
When you vote, you enact this tradition. However memorable this election will be, I believe that this tradition is worthy of our recollection. Going to the polls on Tuesday, you keep it alive. Standing in line for the voting machine, think for a moment of this broader perspective, that of long generations crawling out of the Stone Age to freedom. And of those who still seek to understand the promises of freedom.
Frank Carpenter