One way to define our identity is to name our core principles: we are what we value. On the eve of an important mid-term election, I’m moved to name democracy as a core UU principle. Democracy grows from the same liberal principles that shape our liberal religion. On the Unitarian side, democracy honors the worth of every person. On the Universalist side, democracy recognizes that eventually we are all in this together.
Watch a video of this worship service
The election day sermon is an honored tradition in America. It goes back to revolutionary times. The idea is that before a person visits their polling place, they should visit their worship place and be reminded of and confirmed in the moral principles that should be their guide in voting.
Here’s how a famous election day sermon begins. This was preached by a Congregationalist pastor named Samuel West on May 29, 1776, in what is today Dartmouth, NH, but was at the time part of the Massachusetts Colony.
“The great Creator, having designed the human race for society, has made us dependent on one another for happiness. He has so constituted us that it becomes both our duty and interest to seek the public good; and that we may be the more firmly engaged to promote each other’s welfare, the Diety has endowed us with tender and social affections, with generous and benevolent principles: hence the pain that we feel in seeing an object of distress; hence the satisfaction that arises in relieving the afflictions, and the superior pleasure which we experience in communicating happiness to the miserable.
The Diety has also invested us with moral powers and faculties, by which we are enabled to discern the difference between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, good and evil: hence the approbation of mind that arises upon doing a good action, and the remorse of conscience which we experience when we counteract the moral sense and do that which is evil.
This proves that, in what is commonly called a state of nature, we are the subjects of the divine law and government; that the Diety is our supreme magistrate, who has written his law in our hearts, and will reward or punish us according as we obey or disobey his commands.”
The sermon is long, as sermons were at the time. But let me give you also, the thesis Reverend West eventually arrives at in his election day sermon on the eve of the American Revolution. Arguing from scripture and from his theology of a natural moral law, he concludes:
“From hence it follows that tyranny and arbitrary power are utterly inconsistent with and subversive of the very end and design of civil government, and directly contrary to natural law, which is the true foundation of civil government and all politic law. Consequently, the authority of a tyrant is of itself null and void; for as no man can have a right to act contrary to the law of nature, it is impossible that any individual, or even the greatest number of men, can confer a right upon another of which they themselves are not possessed; i.e., no body of men can justly and lawfully authorize any person to tyrannize over and enslave his fellow-creatures, or do anything contrary to equity and goodness.”
The purpose of the election day sermon is to lift up the moral principles as we are taught through our religion, and then encourage each voter to take that elevated conscience into the world beyond, through the medium of the ballot box as they make the decisions that will shape our society, choose our representatives and guide our government.
I’ve given many election day sermons: at least every two years in November. Sometimes, also, at other times of the year when a primary or special election warrants particular attention. Every sermon is different as the various circumstances of our society and issues and candidates on the ballot change. A Unitarian Universalist election day sermon is not a “get out the vote” sermon. I assume that nearly everyone here needs no encouragement from me to do what you would do anyway, or because of early voting has probably already done. But it’s the place of a sermon like this one to think thoughtfully about the intersection of our faith and our politics.
In this instance, I believe there is absolutely a place for the church to be involved in politics. Indeed, how could it be otherwise? How could we say that the principles that we lift up and consider and strive to align our lives with every Sunday, should somehow be left outside when we enter the voting booth? We can decry how evangelical Christianity is currently driving a particular far right politics. We can wish that evangelical Christians were a little more attuned to Jesus’ message in the sermon on the Mount, and a little less influenced by the sermons of fear and power preached by Tucker Carlson, but we would be hypocrites if we said that we should vote our religious values and others should not.
In any case, it can’t be done. Whatever your values are, wherever you learn them, from church or synagogue or Fox News, what else could we use to guide our decisions marked on the ballot, if not the same principles that we use to mark our souls?
It can’t be done.
To say that religious people should forget their religious principles, but that secular people should honor their principles, is simply an illogical prejudice. Everyone is guided always, in all their choices, by their particular moral sense. Of course they are. So the question cannot be, “Should morals be your guide?” but “Which morals are guiding you?” The ones I hold and wish for all of us, or the opposite ones, held by other voters, which I think are wrong and should be rejected?
And there, at its starkest, is the nature of democracy, and the challenge of democracy at its core.
We don’t agree. And yet we must live together in society. So who decides? How do we together create a community and preserve it, when some get their way and get their candidate elected, and others have to grumble and go along?
People don’t always agree on the vision of what our shared society ought ultimately to become. And, even among those who do agree on the ultimate vision, we don’t always agree on the path that we should take to get there.
People don’t always agree. And sometimes, even, when we agree on a moral principle, we disagree on the interpretation of that principle as it applies to a particular social issue.
At what point between conception and birth does an embryo become a person of inherent worth and dignity?
Justice and compassion for who, the victims of crime or the perpetrators?
Does acceptance of one another include the people who are set on destruction of our social institutions?
How do we balance the right of individual freedom with the responsibility to live in community?
And the essential principle for today, how do we trust the right of conscience, what Smauel West might call the “moral law”, when one person’s conscience seems to lead them to ideas and actions that I view as manifestly immoral, wrong, and hurtful?
People don’t always agree.
We need not speak about good and evil people, or constructive and destructive natures. Even among people of good will, when it comes down to voting yes or no on a particular proposition on the ballot, or voting for a candidate for office charged with moving us closer to our ideal, reasonable, moral, people, can disagree.
Earlier in Reverend West’s election day sermon from 1776, he surmises that if humanity had remained in the moral state in which we were originally created we would have no need of civil laws and government at all. In the original paradise we simply followed the natural moral law. Our minds saw the right and the good automatically, and our perfect will naturally obeyed God’s plan for what we ought to do.
But in our fallen state, we no longer know the natural, moral law completely accurately. And even when we know the right and the good perfectly, our fallen, sinful, natures, often tempt us to do the opposite of what we ought.
Nor should we be so arrogant as to assume that our side knows the right and the best and it’s only the folks in the other political party that have got the moral law twisted in the minds and hearts. There’s plenty of room for argument and disagreement throughout the political spectrum, even among our friends crowded together near one end. The candidates aren’t perfect. The propositions aren’t perfect. Society’s problems are complicated. The moral implications are conflicted. Solutions have unintended consequences. No one of us is all good, or completely wise. We build from an imperfect past, toward an uncertain future.
We’ve been talking for the last couple of months about the spiritual question of identity. “Who am I?” is the spiritual question at the core of every religion and every thoughtful human life. What is a human being? What is our nature? Good? Evil? Originally good but fallen? Advancing through rounds of incarnation toward perfection? A mortal being like every other animal with just this one life to do our best?
And the related question, “Who are we?” As a species. As a community. How are we like other animals? How are we different?
I’ve offered several different ways of answering that question. We are defined by our individual life experience. We are defined by the job we do: minister, teacher, accountant. We are defined by the relationships we have with others: parent, friend. We are defined by the communities we are a part of. As Unitarian Universalists we are defined by our shared faith, and also by our history: grounded in Judaism and early Christianity, later Protestant Christianity and Humanism, then Transcendentalism and the post-Christian faith of Unitarian Universalism.
Another way to define our identity, is to name our values. We are the people who hold these principles.
I’ll look more deeply at our shared values after the first of the year when we turn from looking at the spiritual question of identity, “Who am I?” to the spiritual question of meaning, “Why does it matter?”
But for today, and for the rest of this month, I wanted to lift up a few core principles of our faith. Principles that express our deepest values and define who we are.
Today, appropriately for an election day sermon, I want to lift up the principle of democracy.
“The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.”
That’s the fifth principle of the seven principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
For this election day sermon rather than talk about particular issues on the ballot, I want to talk about the ballot itself, the principle of democracy.
How, when people don’t agree, when even people of good will, who share the same moral principles don’t agree, when even people who share the same vision for the society we hope to create don’t agree about the best path to reach that hoped for vision; how do we decide what to do?
And because the fifth principle settles democracy within our congregations as well as in society at large, let’s ask that question for our church as well as our city, state, and nation. When people don’t agree, how do we decide?
Shall we let the strongest, most powerful person make the decisions for us, and let them gain their position by proving how strong they are, and let them enforce their rule by force? Should we let them crush and silence the opposition so that none dare disagree, at least until a yet more powerful force arises? Some societies are arranged that way.
Should we let the wisest person lead us and trust that their deeper knowledge will correct our ignorance? But who decides who is the wisest person? And is any human person really that all-knowing?
Should we find the most morally good person and let them be our leader? Well, who is the most morally good? Many societies have been led by a person who ruled by divine right, placed on the throne by God. Jesus yearned for a Kingdom of God. But he also criticized the religious powers of his day as not really representing the divine values. So who’s to say which person truly intuits the good and is capable of combining that moral sense with the skill to lead a society?
Who’s to say? Is the question, again and again. Who will choose? We look for a government sufficiently good, to align our society and its policies with the moral values of peace, liberty, justice, equity, compassion, and so on.
We look for a government sufficiently wise, to discern among several proposed policies the ones that will be effective in moving society toward our goal.
We look for a government sufficiently powerful to get the job done, to manage the resources and direct them appropriately, to persuade the opposition to come on board and overcome resistance, to effect the change we seek.
What people do we know who are good enough, smart enough, and strong enough to create lives of health and joy for ourselves, for each other, and for the world we share?
Perhaps you see where I am going with this…
It was Winston Churchill who said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” He actually did say that, but he was quoting an earlier, anonymous, source. Here is what he actually said, in the House of Commons, on 11 November, 1947:
“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”
“No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise.” Well, that’s for sure. But we don’t need the perfect. What we need is a government that is good enough, morally, and smart enough, and strong enough.
In this world of sin and woe, none of us is all-wise, or all-good, and although there have been many rulers with unconscionable amounts of power, seldom has that power been put to the service of creating lives of health and joy for the majority of the people they rule or the world we share.
So, with no such perfect person available, and with the coming of the Messiah and the Kingdom of God still long delayed, how do we organize ourselves into societies, and resolve our differences, or at least tolerate our disagreements, as we move together toward lives of health and joy?
The answer is democracy. We give that responsibility not to a person, but to all persons. Together we raise our voices, we share our ideas and opinions, we support our proposals with evidence and reason, we organize and work to persuade, and then we vote. We accept the result, we give it a try, and if we find we’ve made a mistake, we vote again. We stumble forward. We keep voting.
We hold, in our individual right to enter the voting booth and make our choice, the responsibility to shape the entire society that enfolds us, considering our own self-interest of course, but also the interest of all others, the yet unfulfilled dreams of the past, the lives in the future that will be shaped by our decisions.
And we vote.
In the midst of a World War, fought in part over the question of how human societies would rule themselves, Churchill said this, in the House of Commons, 31 October, 1944:
“At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper—no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point.”