The democratic process is one of our Seven Principles, but there’s a deeper value that undergirds democracy: the value of liberalism. Classical liberalism is the idea that truth, rather than being imposed downward from an authority, rises up between individuals through the free exchange of ideas, opinions, and evidence. The scientific method and democracy are liberal systems. So is the liberal religion of Unitarian Universalism.
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For the last several weeks we’ve been exploring the values at the center of our Unitarian Universalist faith.
If faith begins with what we believe and ends with what we do, then what comes between believing and doing are the principles that we derive from our beliefs and which guide our doing.
The genius of Unitarian Universalism is to center our faith on the principles, rather than the beliefs or the actions. Our founders realized that many different beliefs can lead people to uphold the same values. Instead of shunning folks with differing ideas, we can learn from them when we are assured they share our values.
We don’t need think alike, in order to love alike, was the philosophy of the 16th century Transylvanian Frances David.
On the other end of the faith line, individuals who share values but have differing interests and abilities will have multiple ways of expressing those values. Some of us will be moved by our values toward political action. Some will be moved to teach our children. Some will be moved to intimate acts of kindness and caring. Some will be moved to work in a garden, or to speak out at a city council meeting. Some will celebrate our values through music or art or storytelling. Some will care for the sick. Some will care for the finances or the database. Some will create occasions for the community to gather and enjoy each other’s company.
If we are solidly united by our shared values, then we can celebrate diverse beliefs and learn from them, and we can express our shared values in a spectrum of acts, giving our values the widest possible life in the world.
Today, in the middle of this long weekend honoring Presidents Day, I want to look at one of the values named in our Seven Principles: the value of democracy.
Democracy might seem a strange word to include in our Seven Principles. It’s so specific, and so political. It jars amid a list of more abstract and loftier words like justice, compassion, peace.
Yes, democracy is good. But is it important? Is democracy actually a principle of our faith, or merely a description of how we choose to organize and lead our communities?
Yet when examined closely, democracy, like the values of love and community we looked at previously, lies at the heart of our faith.
Democracy derives from a core value that informs all our principles, and even the fundamental principles of Unitarian and Universalist theology: the power of the individual, and the necessity of community.
Democracy derives from the answer to the spiritual question of purpose, “What should I do?”. In this case, what should we do together?
How do we know what is best for us? In the work of creating healthy, joyful lives for individuals and communities, which is the work of religion, how do we decide what to do, which goals to pursue, where to spend our resources? How do we make rules for our conduct? How do we choose between opposing ideas?
Should we be led by the strongest person: the loudest, scariest person who can use force to get their way?
Should we let the persons with greatest wealth and cultural power make the rules? Should we grant the leadership perpetually to one honored person, like a pillar of the church, or to a dynastic family with power passed down from generation to generation?
Plato suggested we should find the smartest people in the community and let them make the decisions. But then, who’s to say who are the smartest people?
Or maybe we should be led by a prophet who claims for themselves some kind of special connection to the divine plan.
Or maybe there’s a book of rules, like a scripture, or a secular law book written by a wise ancestor that we can read for guidance. But which book? And who should interpret it?
Or maybe we should assign decision making to the elders among us. But does wisdom always come with age? Does experience from the past always prepare for the challenges of today, or tomorrow?
In all these systems of governance the strategy is to identify some special person or kinds of persons specially gifted in some way by age, or family, or intelligence, or tradition, or strength, or holiness, and set them up as authorities over the rest of us.
One particular quality is raised above all others. The other gifts of the community are ignored.
Democracy flips this hierarchy. Democracy begins from the worth and dignity of every person, the power of every individual. And then, recognizing that we are all in this together, democracy gathers all the gifts of the community.
A democratic community makes decisions for itself rising from the opinions of all its members. Power flows up from the community: from the demos. Leaders derive conditional authority from the people who choose them, and remain formally accountable to the people they represent. Democracy. The people rule themselves.
The ideals of democracy follow from a philosophy called liberalism.
In politics, democracy is the liberal answer to the question of how can we know what is best for a community? We ask the people. The people propose ideas and debate and eventually vote. Liberalism, generally, is an answer to the question how can we know what is real? How can we know what is true? How can we know?
We could, as in the various political systems, pick some special person or kind of persons, and trust them to know the truth, and tell the truth.
Or, we could follow a liberal system, as in democracy, where the best, the true, the real, rises up from the differing gifts of a broad community of people, from a practice of many people contributing their individual ideas and opinions, and letting those ideas be tested by the community, with the most successful ideas, eventually, coming out on top.
Think of science, for instance, the liberal system of the scientific method.
It used to be that if you wanted to know something about the natural world, you read the answer in a book. Or, if you couldn’t read, or didn’t understand what the book said, you asked somebody special and they told you the answer.
We thought we knew everything or at least everything worth knowing. The powerful change that occurred when we entered the Enlightenment 500 or so years ago, was not that we suddenly knew more, but that we became fascinated by what we didn’t know. It wasn’t the age of suddenly turning on a light. It was the age of becoming aware how opaque the natural world actually was to our curious minds. It was a new age of deliberately probing a darkness we hadn’t previously acknowledged.
The scientific method begins by identifying a dark spot in our knowledge: a question. A scientist then proposes an answer: an hypothesis. Then the scientist explores or researches or uses logic and reason, or designs and conducts an experiment to test the hypothesis. Next, the scientist shares his evidence with other scientists. The community debates and argues, criticizes and defends. Over time the community moves toward the answer that best describes reality. Knowledge advances.
Rather than conceding, “well this guy clearly knows the most; we should just trust him,” the scientific method requires that every scientist submit their work to be critiqued and tested by others. Rather than saying, “well the answer to that question was settled long ago and there’s nothing more to know,” scientists are encouraged to continually question and propose new answers.
Imagine if we had never entered the age of doubt! Imagine if we had continued to say, as human culture said for so many centuries: everything that we need to know is already known.
See how far we have come in exploring our world, the cosmos, and the human mind. See how we have advanced in physics, and evolution, in technology, in medicine, in human rights. Liberalism cannot correct the flaws in our human nature, but it manages our individual limitations by forcing them to pass through the corrective of the community in an iterative process that ever so gradually progresses.
The word liberalism derives from the root word liber, which means free. Liberalism depends on the principle of freedom. All people are free to participate. Any proposed truth may be freely questioned. Contrary opinions are free to be heard.
In politics, liberalism looks like democracy.
In gaining knowledge of the natural world, liberalism looks like the scientific method.
In economics, liberalism looks like the free market, with prices set by bargaining not regulation.
In religion, liberalism looks like Unitarian Universalism.
Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religion.
Liberal, in this case, doesn’t refer to our politics, it means that we follow in our religion the liberal method of discovering the truth and advancing knowledge.
We don’t listen to one prophet or read one scripture. Everyone is free to participate. That’s “the worth and dignity of every person.”
Persons are always cared for and respected, that’s “justice, equity and compassion in human relations,” but our individual ideas and opinions are vigorously debated and argued in our congregations.
Every diverse idea or opinion or personal story is welcome to be included in our mutual exploration. That’s “acceptance of one another” and that’s how we move beyond our own experience to encourage “spiritual growth” in one another.
In the liberal religious method, no proposed idea is too outlandish or too fanciful to be entertained. But, if you want the community to adopt your idea, you must be willing to defend it wiith evidence, be willing to hear questions and criticism and hear counter arguments, and use persuasion not coercion to bring others to your point of view. That’s “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.”
We celebrate and depend on each individual being true to themselves and being courageous in sharing their view, even if it’s outside the norm. That’s the right of conscience. And then we use “the democratic process within our congregations, and in society at large” to mold those individual gifts into our shared faith.
Our goal, religiously and socially, is to foster and sustain liberal communities, in our congregations and worldwide, “with peace, liberty, and justice for all.”
And because liberalism connects the individual to the group, the part to the whole, our liberal religion holds “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we [each one of us] are a part.”
Thus, the liberal method is woven into every principle of our faith. Liberalism grounds our honoring of the individual, inspires our defense of freedom with responsibility, shapes the democratic way we govern our congregations, and inspires our vision of a world community.
Democracy is not simply a way to live our faith; it is our faith: the power of the individual, the necessity of community. In the words of our chalice lighting this morning, “We light this chalice—Not because we have the truth, but because we each come bearing and seeking many truths.” As John Milton said in our Call to Worship, “Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions. Give me liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
We are a gentle people, sometimes impassioned with righteous anger, a justice seeking people, young and old, many colors, gay and straight, all together, singing and striving for healthy, joyful lives for ourselves, and each other and the world we share.
From that multitude of stories, experiences, ideas, and opinions, we grapple our way to the true, the real, the best.
An attack on democracy, then, is an attack on our faith.
If we are willing, then, to defend our faith (I hope I am, I hope we are), we should be willing also, to defend democracy.
Because, friends, democracy is under attack.
Internationally. Democratic governments are under pressure from populist authoritarians. Repressive governments like China and Russia are growing stronger.
Nationally. We continue to suffer from our own populist authoritarian and from forces that praise that style of leader. In many states voting rights are curtailed, gerrymandering wins seats for politicians against the will of the people, fair elections are threatened by partisan election officials.
Throughout our culture, I’m concerned about the eroding of the liberal premises that democracy depends on.
The premise that all ideas and opinions have a right to be heard. Are we willing to give space and listen respectfully to ideas that challenge us?
The premise that all ideas must be open to argument and criticism. Do we notice when an idea is presented as sacrosanct and to speak against it risks shunning and shaming?
The premise that ideas must be defended by evidence and reason. Do we recognize the difference between a subjective experience and an objective fact; between a personal anecdote, and a shared truth?
The premise that there are no privileged persons or groups whose ideas are beyond questioning. Do we defer to some voices based merely on their status or identity group? Do we condescend to some in our community by considering them too fragile to withstand the testing of critique and debate we require of others?
Have we descended so far into tribalism that we have given up on the liberal, democratic premise that a diverse community can work collectively toward a shared truth, or that we should even want to?
Have we abandoned the liberal promise that true knowledge is available to human persons and human society, or that knowledge is even worth having, when power seems so much more attractive to so many?
On this weekend when we recognize our U.S. Presidents, the good and the bad, the way they have upheld democracy, and sometimes worked to subvert it, I am mindful of the way our liberal faith is intimately connected to the liberal system of democracy.
Much is at stake in this current time, politically, and spiritually.
I hope while we rest this three-day weekend, that we might gather strength for the work required to defend our democracy. As democracy rises from the power of the individual to the necessity of community, we can begin with ourselves and the groups we belong to. What do we notice? How do we respond?
May we be bold and strong and inspired by love to do the work required for the health of our communities, our nation, and our world: the foundation of our government, and a principle of our faith.