Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Briarcliff, Croton, and Ossining

God is Neither a Republican or a Democrat: Religion and the Soul of America

Given by James Covington on September 26th, 2004

You may have noticed a full page advertisement in the New York Times in recent days with the headline, God is Neither a Republican or a Democrat. I signed on to the statement and contributed financial support to help pay for the ad, to Sojourners, the liberal Christian organization that is sponsoring it. I did so, not because I believe in God, but because I believe in the true soul of democracy.

In my opinion it is the height of hypocrisy and presumption to declare or imply that God ever favors any political party or culture. If I had my way I would ban “God” from the vocabulary of any political candidate. But then I would be violating the 1st amendment. Those of us who are otherwise made uneasy by all the God-talk in politics these days will have to deal with it, address it as forthrightly as we can, given the context in which it is used.

Technically, I am not a theist or a Christian. I consider myself a religious humanist. But personally, I have no problem with the idea of God. I use the word often. I believe the word “god” is a poetic metaphor for the essence of love that transcends and sustains us, and runs through all living things and when apprehended can guide us to do that which is right and just. The God of the religious heritage I come from ultimately stands for love and justice. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, a plumb line must be held up to the practice of justice in the society and proper judgment must then be accorded without favor to political powers.

One hundred and seventy years after his visit to our country, Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations, printed on the front cover of the program today, still ring true in their astute analysis of the unique political and moral character of America. Tocqueville identified the role religion has always played in shaping both American institutions and civil society. As you may know, our own UU denomination has been instrumental in shaping a society that upholds human rights. Tocqueville predicted that America would thrive as a model of democracy and equality precisely because of this pervasive religiosity and the cultural mores it helped form and popularize.

However, the men who framed our Constitution believed in religious tolerance in a secular republic. The state was not to choose sides among competing claims of faith. “Another person’s belief,” said Thomas Jefferson, “neither picks my pocket nor breaks my bones.” It was a noble sentiment often breached in practice. The Indians who lived here first had more than their pockets picked; the Africans brought here forcibly against their will had more than their bones broken. In addition, Catholics, Jews, and Mormons have had to struggle against intolerance.

So our history makes us wonder how in this new era when we are looking even less and less alike, are we to avoid the intolerance and fanaticism of the past that mark the long history of world religions.

Religion has a healing side, but it also has a killing side. In the opening chapter of Genesis, the founding document of three great faiths—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—the first murder rises from a religious act, when Cain kills his brother because he was jealous that God had favored Able.

In our time alone the litany is horrendous. We have Shias and Sunnis in Iraq in fratricidal conflict. Teenage girls in Algeria are shot in the face for not wearing a veil. The throats of professors are cut for teaching male and female students in the same classroom. A fanatical Jewish doctor with a machine gun mows down 30 praying Muslims in a mosque. We have Muslim suicide bombers bent on the obliteration of Jews. A young Orthodox Jew assassinated Yitzhak Rabin and announced that “Everything I did, I did for the glory of God.” Hindus and Muslims slaughter each other in India.

Meanwhile, groups calling themselves the Christian Identity Movement and the Christian Patriot League arm themselves and await the rapture while they get politically involved to hasten the divine scenario for the Apocalypse. I think of the Quaker William Penn who said: “To be furious in religion, is to be furiously irreligious.”

This is a time of testing—for people of liberal faith and for people who believe in democracy. How do we nurture the healing side of religion over the killing side? How do we protect the soul of democracy against the contagion of triumphalist theology in the service of an imperial state? At stake is the very character of the American Experiment—whether “we, the people” is the political incarnation of a spiritual truth—one nation, indivisible—or a stupendous fraud.

I liked the sentiment of Barack Obama’s speech at the democratic convention about there being one America, but I disagree with him. There are two Americas today. You could see this division in a little-noticed action this spring in the House of Representatives. Republicans approved new tax credits for the children of families earning as much as $309,000 a year—families that already enjoy significant benefits from earlier tax cuts—while doing next to nothing for those at the low end of the income scale.

Nothing seems to embarrass the political class in Washington today. Not the fact that more children are growing up in poverty in America than in any other industrial nation; not the fact that millions of workers are actually making less money today in real dollars than they did 20 years ago; not the fact that working people are putting in long and longer hours just to stay in place; not the fact that while we have the most advance medical care in the world, nearly 44 million Americans—8 out of 10 of them in working families—are uninsured and cannot get the basic care they need.

Nor is the political class embarrassed by the fact that the gap between rich and poor is greater than it’s been in 50 years—the most inequality among all Western nations. In fact, there is a new poverty class today—families that include two parents, a worker, and a head of household with more than a high school education. These are the people our political and business class expects to climb out of poverty on an escalator moving downward.

In 1960, the gap in terms of wealth between the top 20 percent and the bottom 20 percent was 30- fold. Four decades later it is more than 75 fold.

Bill Moyers in his book, Moyers on America, and the inspirational source for the sermon, claims that the greatest change in Washington over the past 25 years has been in the preoccupation of money.

It is widely accepted in Washington today that there is nothing wrong with a democracy dominated by the people with money. But of course there is. During his brief campaign in 2000, before he was ambushed by the dirty tricks of the Religious Right in South Carolina and big money from George W. Bush’s wealthy elites, John McCain said elections today are nothing less than an “influence peddling scheme in which both parties compete to stay in office by selling the country to the highest bidder.”

That’s the shame of politics today. What are the consequences? “When powerful interests shower Washington with millions in campaign contributions, they often get what they want. That’s why so many people are turned off by politics. The great Justice Learned Hand once said: “If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: ‘Thou shalt not ration justice.’”

But that’s what’s been happening. With the rise of corporate activism, the rise of a religious orthodoxy that has made an idol of wealth and power, and a host of political decisions favoring the powerful moneyed interests, a formidable political machine has been established that has built alliances with the Religious Right—Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson being but two names that come to mind. Thus far this political marriage has been quite successful.

But look at the spoils of victory: Over the past three years, they have pushed through $2 trillion dollars in tax cuts. More than half the benefits are going to the wealthiest 1 percent. What’s going to happen? Obviously, domestic social programs will be the first to go. They will “starve the beast,” as they say. They are systematically shredding the social safety net that was supposed to protect people from hardships beyond their control. But they are rewarding the rich and waging war.

What shall be the answer of those of us who see the spoiling of the American dream before our eyes? Our times cry out for a new politics of justice. The religious right have actually high-jacked the Jesus who stood in Nazareth and preached to the poor, challenged the religious orthodoxy of the day and fed the hungry on the Sabbath. The Jesus I know about is the one who drove the money changers from the temple. The Jesus I studied in seminary has been made over into a militarist and lobbyist.

Our times cry out for a new politics of justice. This is no partisan issue. It doesn’t matter if you’re a liberal or a conservative, God is both and neither. We need a moral faith, whether you are atheist, agnostic, or Christian, Jewish, Muslim that takes on the corruption of both parties. WE need an action-faith that takes on the complacency of all power. If you’re a Democrat, shake them up. If you’re a Republican, shame them. The Jewish prophets of old condemned them. Jesus drove the money changers from the temple. We must drive them from the temples of democracy.

But let’s do it in love. I know it can sound banal and facile to say this. The word “Love” gets thrown around too casually these days. And brute reality can mock the whole idea of loving one another. We are still living in the shadow of Dachau and Buchenwald. The smoke still rises above Kosovo and Rwanda, Chechnya and East Timor. The walls of Abu Ghraib still shriek of pain. In regard to the genocide in Sudan, the world community as represented at the U.N. remains mostly inept in its response. What has love done?

But the love I mean is the love described by Reinhold Niebuhr in his book of essays Justice and Mercy, where he writes, “When we talk about love we have to become mature or we will become sentimental. Basically love means. . . being responsible, responsibility to our family, toward our civilization, and now by the pressures of history, toward the universe of humankind.” Indeed. “What is our responsibility, now?” That is the question of the hour. What is our responsibility to one another, as I tried to speak to last week? And what is our responsibility to the Iraqi people, regardless of the errors and miscalculations the present administration has committed? What is our responsibility to those who are poor? To the environment which we continue to pollute? How do we answer that question?

The constitution of the U.S. is a political creed. It is not a religious creed. It is the American creed, which involved transcendent elements and religious thinking, but rises above sheer materialism and combines the two. That’s the realm that should guide us. It shouldn’t be, “what does God ordain for our policy?” as the religious right would have it. It should be, “what is consistent with the American creed? What is consistent with the guiding principles of our community?” As one nation, indivisible, what is our responsibility?

What I am talking about will be hard, devoid of sentiment and practical as nails. But love is action, not sentimental.

I read where someone said the other day that “none are good but all are sacred.” I want to think this is what the founders meant when they included the not-so-evident assertion that “all men are created equal.” Truly life is not fair and it is never equal. But I believe the founders were speaking a powerful spiritual truth that is the heart of our hope for this country. They saw America as a great promise—and it is.

But America is a broken promise, and we are called to do what we can to fix it—to get America back on the track. St. Augustine shows us how: “one loving soul sets another on fire.” But to move beyond sentimentality, what begins in love must lead on to justice. We are called to the fight of our lives.

Yesterday, as I was rushing down West Fourth Street in the West Village on my way to officiating a wedding, I passed by my old church stomping grounds—the Judson Memorial Church. As I approached the church, I knew what I would be looking for. They have a bulletin board outside where they always have some statement or quote that speaks to the times in which we live. I wondered what might be there this time. So when I got there, I read it and was deeply moved. I read it again, and then, knowing I was running late to the wedding, I wrote it down. This is what it said:

“We are people of courage. We will not allow our national tragedy to be manipulated and dishonored. We will not be bullied by scare tactics into fearfulness. Watch us rise to the challenge before us. For we are people of September 12 who repaired the broken and broken hearted. We are the people of September 12 who love this country, its people, its land, its governance, its promise, its future. We are the people of September 12 and we’re taking our country back now. Welcome to the land of the brave.”

We are called to the fight of our lives.