Our Distinctive Voice

The previous post raised the question, "If we say we’re coming out of religious liberal experience and principles, and our listeners aren’t religious liberals, have we rendered our argument irrelevant to them?"

Photo by Peter Bowden

Here’s why articulating our grounding in our liberal religious values and principles increases the relevance and effectiveness of our voice.

Political discourse isn’t about coming up with some knock-down argument that produces instant conversion in your listeners. It’s much more about creating some sense of connection that opens an invitation to consider. People can connect across huge differences – and we actually make it easier for that to happen if we’re clear up front about what the differences are. It’s always helpful to give other people a better sense of where you’re coming from – to situate ourselves in our own experience and context of commitments.

Have you ever had the experience of listening to someone talking, and they’re worked up about something, but you can’t get a handle on where they’re coming from, or why that issue matters to them? It’s hard to connect with what they’re saying. By providing listeners with a sense of what our grounding is we become – subtly, and perhaps strangely, yet palpably – more comprehensible. And that’s true even if our listeners have very different religious convictions. They might not agree, but expressing our religious grounding can help them understand -- and that's step one.

Any time someone is saying something that doesn’t agree with what we already believe, we are naturally going to have some wondering about their motive. “Why would they say such a wrongheaded thing?” we have to wonder. There are, for instance, apparently, people who, not wanting to believe in climate change, say that those climate scientists are just saying what they say because that’s how they get funding. “They’re making stuff up because that’s how they keep their jobs.” We are inclined to suspect the motives of people who say things we disagree with – that’s a very common way human brains deal with that dissonance. So if we go ahead and say that we’re coming out of a grounding in the experiences and teachings and principles and values of a specifiable religious community, that can help clear up unspoken doubts about our motives.

Also: If we give only secular reasons, we aren’t adding a distinctive voice to the public discourse. There are always plenty of folks making all the secular arguments. Those congressional staffers listening to William Sinkford didn’t need to hear one more recounting of the usual arguments. They needed to hear the distinctive voice that comes from anchoring the position in our community’s experience and intentional commitments. That’s what they got, and it worked so much better.

Finally, “given the public dominance of conservative religious voices today, if religious liberals don’t speak up, no one else will know that there is another religious perspective” (Rasor).

I mentioned the new Unitarian Universalist study/action issue on income inequality that our delegates selected and General Assembly 2014. Two years previously, at General Assembly 2012, our delegates selected reproductive freedom as the study/action issue. So we’re now in the final two years of that one. I was there in Phoenix in 2012 for the floor debate, and it was clear that the argument that carried the day for selecting reproductive freedom over any of the other pressing and important issues proposed was that this issue especially requires a liberal religious voice. The public discourse on that subject draws so heavily from religious groundings – and almost all of it is from the right, opposed to reproductive freedom. We need to be out there showing it isn’t just the irreligious who advocate for reproductive freedom. We have deep religiously grounded reasons for standing up for access to birth control and education and abortion rights.

We have a voice. We need to use it – not to make other people be just like us but so that we can be just like us. So that we can become who we are. So that we can join the fray in which both sides -- all sides -- learn and grow.

We have a voice. And our world so desperately needs to hear it.

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This is part 4 of 4 of "Reclaiming Prophetic Witness"
See also:
Part 1: Living Our Faith
Part 2: Principles and Religious Principles
Part 3: Connect Your Politics to Your Faith

Connect Your Politics to Your Faith

We have certain commitments as Unitarian Universalists. We are committed to the values expressed in our seven principles and six sources and in, for instance, the words of our hymns and the readings in back of our hymnal. We don't always claim them as religious principles when we speak on public issues.

Rev. William Sinkford, UUA President, 2001 - 09.
Photo by H. F. Garcia from uua.org

Sometimes we have drafted resolutions at General Assembly that in no way indicate that the principles at issue are principles that we have made a part of our religious identity.

Other times, we do a better job.

Here’s an example of doing it well, cited by Paul Rasor, Reclaiming Prophetic Witness:

“The 2006 statement by Rev. William Sinkford, then president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, to a group of congressional staffers offers an excellent example of effective liberal public prophetic witness grounded in clearly expressed religious convictions. Sinkford was speaking in opposition to a proposed Federal Marriage Amendment that would have prohitibted same-sex marriage. He began by grounding his position in Unitarian Universalist theological principles and collective liberal religious experience:

‘Within Unitarian Universalism, we know from our own experience the many blessings that gay and lesbian people bring to our congregations and communities. We know from our lived experience in religious community that differences of faith, of race, and of sexual orientation need not divide us, that diversity within the human family can be a blessing and not a curse. Unitarian Universalists affirm that it is the presence of love and commitment that we value. For Unitarian Universalists, it is homophobia that is the sin, not homosexuality. Unitarian Universalists stand on the side of love.’

Sinkford then linked this deep religious conviction to public policy arguments about discrimination and personal freedom, noting the historical parallels between the proposed marriage amendment and earlier laws prohibiting interracial marriage.”

In the case of income inequality, or any policies that favored the rich or neglected the poor, we might offer our own grounding, different from Coffin’s but also not secular like Rawls. We might say:

“As a religious liberal, I believe that justice requires us to be concerned primarily for those who have least.”

Consider some other examples.

Instead of:

“Voter ID laws are an attempt to squelch the voting of certain populations, and that’s a violation of democratic process.”

We could say:

“As a Unitarian Universalist, ‘the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large’ is one of our seven principles, and Voter ID laws that attempt to squelch the voting of certain populations violate democratic process.”

We could say:

“The way we’ve been treating immigrants ignores their inherent worth and dignity.”

Or we could, instead, say:

“As a Unitarian Universalist, the inherent worth and dignity of every person is a central principle – so I call for treatment of immigrants that recognizes their inherent worth and dignity.”

We could say – as some of us at the People's Climate March on Sep 21 probably were saying:

“Our carbon emissions have reached the point that climate change threatens the interdependent web of life.”

Or we could, instead, say:

“Respect for the interdependent web of existence is a tenant of my Unitarian Universalist faith. It would be unfaithful of me to disrespect the interdependent web of existence by not doing all I can to encourage reduction of carbon emissions.”

These examples all reference our seven principles, but those aren’t the only principles we have. Our six sources also indicate possible points of grounding, as do James Luther Adams’ five smooth stones of liberalism, and the "Four Noble truths of Unitarian Universalism":

"It’s a blessing you were born. It matters what you do. Your experience of the divine is true. And you don’t have to go it alone." (adapted from lyrics by Laila Ibrahim for a "Chalice Camp" song)

What difference does it make if we do this -- if we take the extra step of connecting what we’re saying to the religious community we’re in? It might seem counterintuitive. If we say we’re coming out of religious liberal experience and principles, and our listeners aren’t religious liberals, have we rendered our argument irrelevant to them? No, actually. I'll explain why not in the next post, part 4.

* * *
This is part 3 of 4 of "Reclaiming Prophetic Witness"
See also
Part 1: Living Our Faith
Part 2: Principles and Religious Principles
Part 4: Our Distinctive Voice

Principles and Religious Principles

I'd like to see religious liberals return to the the public sphere, where we were in the 1950s and 60s, making strong cases for our positions, and grounding them in our religious principles. So for starters we need to ask: what makes a politically relevant principle a religious principle?

Unitarian Church of Barnstable, MA. Wikimedia Commons

Consider for example the case of our growing income inequality. At the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly last June, the delegates selected income inequality as our study/action issue for the next four years. We select one new study/action issue every two years for a four-year process, so we’re always in the first two years of one issue and in the second two years of another issue. The new issue which calls for our attention as Unitarian Universalists is income inequality.

The inequality has gotten alarmingly extreme. In the early 1950s, 80% of the gains from economic growth went to the bottom 90%. 20% of the gains from growth went to the top 10%. So the richest were still gaining ground, and they were gaining ground faster than the rest, but still the bottom 90% were gaining, and they were gaining a pretty reasonable chunk. For the next 30 years the percentage of economic growth -- of increase in mean income -- going to the top 10 percent gradually rose. Then, starting it 1980, it began dramatically rising. By the early 2000s, the top 10%, instead of getting 20% of the new wealth, were getting 98% of it. Only 2% of economic growth was going to the bottom 90%. Then, in the 3-year-period from 2009 to 2012, the top 10% got more than all of the economic growth. About 116% of the growth went to top 10%. More than all of it! The bottom 90% got negative 16% of economic growth. The top 10% got all of the growth, and then, on top of that, extracted 16% more, taking it from the bottom 90%. There was an overall rising tide, but 90% of the boats were actually, on average, sinking.

Someone wanting to speak out against that inequality might give a religious grounding, or a purely secular grounding. For an example of a religious grounding, here’s William Sloane Coffin, with a specifically Christian argument:

"If 'God is love,' then in responding to God we respond also to one another: the other members of our family, of our church, and of our circle of friends. But is that enough? Jesus said, 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, my siblings, ye have done it unto to me." (Matthew 25:40). To be converted by Christ is to be converted to the poor: to lives bleak and merciless, to people for whom there seems to be neither past nor future, only a meaningless present. There is no way that Christianity can be spiritually redemptive without being socially responsible.”

That’s an argument with theological grounding. It’s based in the teachings of Jesus, and it calls for us to exert particular concern for the least of these.

Concern for the least advantaged might also be argued for on purely secular conceptions of justice, such as the one that philosopher John Rawls developed in his majestic 600-page 1971 work, A Theory of Justice, in which Rawls derives and defends the thesis that inequalities of wealth are just and fair only insofar as the inequalities are the result of processes that benefit the least advantaged. He makes a detailed moral argument for this thesis – and it is not a religiously or theologically grounded argument.

Our principles – our seven Unitarian Universalist principles -- could be secular principles. The inherent worth and dignity of every person; justice, equity, and compassion in human relations; acceptance of one another; search for truth and meaning; rights of conscience, democracy; world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all; respect for the interdependent web of existence -- each of those could be a secular principle. So what makes them religious principles? We do. We make those principles religious. We’re religious, and they’re our principles – so, quite simply, that makes them religious principles.

The same principles could be secular for someone else. If a private citizen who wasn’t a part of any Unitarian Universalist community and didn’t identify as Unitarian Universalist, just happened to adopt those particular principles as personal values, then, for that person, these would be secular principles. For us, though, they are religious principles because we’re a religious community for whom these principles are central. Any secular principle can become a religious principle if it is embraced by and made central to the identity of some religious community.

(This, in turn, raises the question: What makes our congregation itself a religious group? We are religious because we do the three things that religion is about. First, we form a community, with shared rituals that affirm our community connection. Second, we are concerned with living better, being better people, the ethics and the values that guide our life. We are concerned with being and becoming good, with developing the virtues. Third, we recognize and celebrate religious experience, those moments of transcendence, of awe and wonder. What makes us religious is that we come together trying to integrate those three in such a way that each one will reinforce the other two. Nonreligious community doesn’t do that.)

So: we're a religion, and our principles are therefore religious principles. What remains, then, is to claim them as religious principles when making our case in the public sphere.

* * *
This is part 2 of 4 of "Reclaiming Prophetic Witness"
See also:
Part 1: Living Our Faith
Part 3: Connect Your Politics to Your Faith
Part 4: Our Distinctive Voice

Living Our Faith

Guy calls the doctor, says the wife’s contractions are five minutes apart.
Doctor says, "Is this her first child?"
Guy says, "No, it’s her husband."

Sometimes the meaning of a question can take a surprising turn. But let us remember who we are. We don't have to interpret every question as being about ourselves -- but we do need to be grounded in self-awareness.

So who are we? For one thing, we are inheritors of a wonderful, vital prophetic tradition. The prophets of old bequeath to us a tradition of critique of entrenched power – of calling out for fairness and attending to the least advantaged. This is our blessed inheritance.

In recent centuries, the abolition movement to end slavery, and the suffrage movement for women’s votes were supported and coached by liberal religious thought. For Unitarians and Universalists in the 19th century, living their faith meant engaging with structures of power on behalf of justice, equity and compassion.

And that’s what it meant for Unitarian Universalists in the the civil rights era of the 1950s and 60s. Religious liberals were among the leading voices of the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. Some of my earliest memories as a Unitarian Universalist youth were participating in marches and rallies protesting the Vietnam war. That’s just what it meant to be a Unitarian Universalist.

There is a definite place for the religious voice in public discourse. As the Supreme Court recognized in Walz v. Tax Commission, back in 1970:

“Adherents of particular faiths and individual churches frequently take strong positions on public issues including vigorous advocacy of legal or constitutional positions. Of course, churches as much as secular bodies and private citizens have that right.”

What the congregation can’t do – what I won’t do, in a public and official ministerial capacity – is advocate for or against any specific candidate for elective office, or any political party. But churches, temples, synagogues, mosques – congregations of any faith – may certainly engage on issues of public policy.

This is what we were doing on Sun Sep 21 when 24 members of this congregation joined 1,500 identified Unitarian Universalists joining about 350,000 marchers to call for climate action. I arrived at the location for faith contingents to gather – there were Muslims and Quakers and Jews and Pagans and Hindus and Buddhists and Zoroastrians, and many others. I stood there for about three and half hours then walked the route of the march for about another three hours. It was great. The whole thing, in fact, felt like a wonderful worship service with hundreds of thousands of people collectively affirming shared value commitments.

Since our heyday in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, religious liberalism has rather retreated from the public square. I would like to see religious liberals reclaim prophetic witness – speak publicly on public issues and, when we do so, speak from our religious understanding.

Paul Rasor would like to see that, too. He’s the author of Reclaiming Prophetic Witness: Liberal Religion in the Public Square. That book has been selected by the Unitarian Universalist Association as the Common Read for the 2014-15 year. It’s the one book that all Unitarian Universalists are being encouraged to read this year. I have now read it, and I want you to read it too. Order it from the UUA Bookstore. You can get through Amazon or Barnes and Noble, but it’s cheaper through the UUA bookstore: it’s $15. (CLICK HERE). It’s short: about 100 pages not counting the notes. Granted, if you’re not used to scholarly humanities writing, some of those pages will be slow going, but it’s well-reasoned. And we need that. We need to think these questions through in that careful way. Community Unitarian Church will be engaging this fall in a process to formulate a social justice agenda for ourselves, and a plan for pursuing that agenda. This year’s UUA Common Read fits perfectly into our process.

What Rasor (in his book) and I (in this blog series) argue for is that religious liberals be in the public sphere, that we make strong cases for our position, and that we ground them in our religious principles.

Next: The first question: What makes a politically relevant principle a religious principle?

* * *
This is part 1 of 4 of "Reclaiming Prophetic Witness"
See also:
Part 2: Principles and Religious Principles
Part 3: Connect Your Politics to Your Faith
Part 4: Our Distinctive Voice