Today, we worship just two days before the mid-term elections.
I could add to the incidents of violence that we memorialized a few minutes earlier the many incidents of violence perpetrated against our democracy by the current Administration.
Our nation is suffering violence against our democracy. Our democracy is imperiled by this ongoing violence directed at the roots of our national tree.
Assaults on our free press, guaranteed in the first amendment.
Assaults on voting rights, guaranteed by the 15th, 19th, and 26thamendments.
Assaults on the deliberative process of “advice and consent” in appointing justices and other officers of the United States, required by Article II, section II of our constitution. Leading to further assault against the legitimacy of public offices by appointing unqualified, or crony officials to lead them.
Abuse of presidential powers such as pardons based on personal favors, or twisting the definition of a national security emergency in order to bypass Congress in enacting immigration or national trade policies.
Assault against the independence of the separate branches of government, such as denying the legitimacy of judicial decisions, making personal insults against sitting members of Congress, and Trump’s repeated assertions that the office of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice are intended to protect him personally, rather than insure justice generally.
The violence that our current Congress does to Democracy by refusing in an obviously partisan manner to hold the President accountable for his actions and words, or to investigate numerous cases of malfeasance, or outrageous corruption by cabinet members and heads of government agencies. Not to mention the numerous members of the President’s campaign team who have already been indicted or found guilty of crimes.
Violence most especially, to the understanding that the office of the President is created to wield power as a representative of and at the service of the American people, not as a tool for amassing personal power and personal wealth.
Today is also the first Sunday that our congregation in worship begins to address the theme of leadership.
Of course I didn’t choose the worship theme for this date accidentally.
I want us to talk about leadership for the next several weeks. What it means to be a leader. What qualities are important in a leader. How are they formed, trained, sustained? How a leader does the job of leading, what they should, and should not do. How leaders deal with difficult decisions. The challenge leaders face when weighing multiple relevant values that conflict with each other. The required humility of a leader. The required boldness of a leader.
And the other half of the issue of leadership lies on the responsibilities of the led. What to do when a leader disappoints, or fails? How do we hold leaders accountable? How do we support leaders? Our responsibility to hold faith, to give our trust, to set aside personal preferences and support a communal decision. How do we celebrate, encourage and empower our leaders giving gratitude for their service as we ask them to lead us for our benefit?
In the last two years, our nation has suffered under the actions of a particularly damaging leader and leadership team.
I don’t refer, now, to the damage of particular policies enacted in the last two years. Although some recent Federal policies have been unusually destructive, cruel, and unjust; it is, the reality of living in a diverse community that sometimes you will disagree with democratically elected leaders. That’s not the kind of damage I speak of today. If the democratic system is strong then leaders will reflect the will of the majority, or be voted out in time and bad policies can be corrected or reversed. That’s why voting matters.
The damage that our current President and his supporters in government has done to this nation is more fundamental than the particular policies enacted. Because the damage is to the system itself. The damage is to the necessary expectation in a democracy that the democratic process is strong and fair. The damage is to our trust that our leaders actually represent the will of the people, or that they can be held accountable to the will of the people.
It isn’t the bad policies of this Administration that are the real danger, although those policies cause terrible suffering in many cases, it is the attack on the principles of our democracy that are the real danger. The greatest dismay I’ve felt over the last two years is watching our leaders in Congress willing to sacrifice the broad principles of our democracy in order to achieve narrow policies they support.
Why is this a topic for a sermon? Why is this an issue for a church?
Because we, as a people of faith, are a community intentionally focused on and gathered around a set of sacred principles. We are a community who understands the necessary inviolability of fundamental principles, and how, if those principles are undermined that no policy built above them can stand.
The current Federal Administration does damage to the nation not merely in the policies that it enacts, and not even, merely, damage to the systems that give legitimacy to those policies, but they do damage to the deepest principles that ground the system of democracy itself.
Where Unitarian Universalists affirm the inherent dignity and worth of every person. We have been subjected in these last two years to violence against human kindness. Gleefulness at cruelty. Statements and actions motivated by no goal except creating a hierarchy of the powerful to be worshipped and the vulnerable to be despised.
Where Unitarian Universalists seek justice, equity and compassion in human relations, we have been subjected to violence against decency. Insults, mocking, incitement to hate.
Where we strive for acceptance of one another, we are subjected to violence against our national community. Deliberately creating division. Inventing and reinforcing false differences between fellow citizens. Blatant appeals to tribalism. Separating us from them.
We seek a free and responsible search for truth but are subjected to a President who does violence against truth itself. Unceasing, self-serving and manipulative lies, more than 6,000 false public statements so far according to a count made by the Washington Post. Wildly unhinged conspiracy theories playing on race-hatred, xenophobia and anti-semitism.
We seek world community with peace, liberty and justice for all, while our President seals the borders and proclaims himself a Nationalist.
We seek respect for the interdependent web of all existence, while our leaders sacrifice the planet and our future for short-term profits accruing to the already most privileged among us.
And so we are left with only number five of our seven principles; one principle left in defense of the savaging of the other six, “The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process.”
On Tuesday, we can vote.
It would be hard to over-estimate the importance of the election our Nation undertakes this Tuesday.
Will our President be furthered empowered or restrained?
Will our President continue to rule unfettered, or will he be held at last accountable?
Will our nation continue to slip toward autocracy or will a brake be put on that slide, and from that foothold, hopefully, begin a slow rebuilding of our democracy?
In the last few weeks, the President has accelerated the politics of fear that has been his style since he began his campaign. Fear works to motivate a certain segment of our nation’s population. We saw the end results of that fear campaign in the shootings and bomb threats of the last few weeks. Fear is a powerful weapon. Fear has been used by tyrants and autocrats throughout human history to amass and hold power. It is fear more than anything else we must resist. More than hateful policies. More that cynicism and lies. More than self-serving and corrupt leaders. We must resist fear.
Fearful, we become powerless and turn to demagogues to save us. But our Unitarian Universalist faith is founded on the truth of our own power, and our ability to save ourselves.
“In the spirit, by the spirit, with the spirit giving power.”
In this church, we sing, not of the power without, but of the power of the faith within. The power of the love within. The power of the joy within. The power of the hope within.
“How could we tire of hope” asks Denise Levertov, when “so much is in bud?” In this church we say, “Surely our river cannot already be hastening into the sea of nonbeing? Not yet, not yet—there is too much broken that must be mended.”
In this church we have hope, because we know our power. In the words of the poet, “We have only begun to know the power that is in us if we would join our solitudes in the communion of struggle.”
Fear takes our power. Hope gives us power.
We will not succomb to fear. We will not accept powerlessness.
Donald Trump is the Calvinist preacher preaching that only our subservient dependence on a powerful savior stands between us and the terrors of Hell.
But we are the faith of Universalism that proclaims in the spirit of John Murray, “Give them not hell, but hope and courage; preach the kindness and everlasting love of God.”
Our Unitarian Universalist faith commands us to, “Go out into the highways and by-ways. Give the people something of your new vision. You may possess a small light, but uncover it, let it shine, use it in order to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men and women.”
On Tuesday, we have the opportunity to carry out that commandment. “You may possess a small light.” The purveyors of the politics of fear are counting that you will consider your small light as nothing and fail to use it. Our democracy depends on your using “your small light in order to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men and women.”
May it be so.