{"id":4108,"date":"2025-02-09T12:31:32","date_gmt":"2025-02-09T20:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=4108"},"modified":"2026-02-10T10:40:24","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T18:40:24","slug":"flawed-leaders-for-flawed-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=4108","title":{"rendered":"Flawed Leaders for Flawed People"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Because leaders are human, they make mistakes. If the leader is a king or a tyrant, the people must simply suffer the leader’s mistakes. But in a democracy, like the United States or a Unitarian Universalist Church, leaders are our leaders, and it is our privilege and responsibility to hold them accountable.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            We\u2019ve been taking a year-long look at the foundational issues of spirituality this year, and, in the process, giving me a chance, as I move through my last year in professional ministry, to offer some final thoughts on these issues that I have turned to time and again over the last thirty years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Today, I want to look at a spiritual issue that is foundational to Unitarian Universalism, but not so much to most other faiths:  this is the issue of democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last summer, when I did my worship planning, I didn\u2019t realize how gravely our federal democracy would be under threat today.  But my intention, in any case, was to say a little about democracy in the nation, which has been under attack in the U.S. for decades actually, increasingly so in recent years, and is always fragile, but more, I wanted to speak about democracy within a Unitarian Universalist congregation, which is also fragile, to some extent, also needs defending, and demands the same kinds of response from our church members that a democratic nation demands from its citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            One of my many disappointments in the recent decision by the UUA to remove the language of our Seven Principles from Article II of the UUA bylaws and replace them with new language built around a list of seven value words, is that democracy is no longer named as one of the core values of the UUA\u2019s description of our faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Unitarian Universalists used to hold, as our fifth principle, \u201cThe use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Now, under one of the seven value words that did make the cut:  \u201cjustice\u201d, the bylaws include a statement about diverse multicultural Beloved Communities (which, by the way, distorts Josiah Royce\u2019s original concept for that phrase.  Royce pictured a single ideal Beloved Community that stretched beyond physical boundaries, not multiple beloved communities).  Then there\u2019s a statement about dismantling racism.  And then, still under the single value word, \u201cjustice\u201d there is the statement, \u201cWe support the use of inclusive democratic processes to make decisions within our congregations, our Association, and society at large.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            That sounds similar, doesn\u2019t it?  But notice how it\u2019s changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cThe use of the democratic process\u201d used to be a principle of our faith, one of the seven.  Now, democracy is reduced to a subset of the value of justice (I\u2019m not sure why), and the preamble is not, \u201cwe covenant to affirm and promote the use of the democratic process\u2026\u201d but \u201cwe support the use of inclusive democratic processes\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cInclusive democratic\u201d is redundant.  And I have no idea why the singular \u201cdemocratic process\u201d needed to be pluralized to \u201cdemocratic processes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            But the significant problem is that the phrase now sounds like a suggestion.  Democracy is OK, if that\u2019s what you like.  \u201cWe support the use of\u2026\u201d say the UUA bylaws.  But other options seem to be supportable, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            But democracy cannot be an option in the liberal church.  Democracy is a foundational requirement of the liberal method.  Democracy is required by liberalism, not a suggestion.  Democracy is how the liberal church does church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            In other religious organizations democracy is non-existent, or watered-down with some nod to democratic decision-making but ultimate power reserved for certain hierarchical positions.  In the liberal church (Unitarian Universalism and some other religions with congregational polity, such as United Church of Christ, or Reformed Judaism), democracy is an expression of our fundamental understanding of how we seek the truth about reality and chart the way forward toward lives of health and joy for ourselves, each other and the world we share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            In many religions, if you want to know the truth you read the scriptures.  Or more likely you ask a member of a select group of people qualified to interpret scripture to tell you what it says.  That\u2019s how you discover the truth.  In addition to the scriptural text, which is the record of revelations to certain people long ago, there may also be a continuing revelation, where certain people today are understood to receive new messages that clarify or expand the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Truth in these systems is confined.  Truth is narrow, closely held, secret.  Truth passes from the leader down to the governed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The Bishop says, \u201cHere is your next minister.  I think you\u2019ll like him.\u201d  The Pope says, \u201cHere is the church\u2019s position on this important social issue.\u201d  The denomination says, \u201cHere is the doctrine that our clergy will preach.  Here is the creed our members must profess.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The liberal method, though, and I mean classic liberalism, not the political left, denies that truth is contained within a particular person or set of people.  Truth is not the exclusive property of especially smart people, or especially strong people, or especially wealthy people, or people born into a particular blood line, or people ordained into a line of apostolic succession from Peter to the present Pope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Truth is equally accessible to all and imperfectly perceived by all.  Truth is widespread, not contained, generous, open.  Everybody shares in the truth.  Truth wells up in everyone who chooses to participate in the process.  And then, through the messy, sometimes difficult, sometimes ugly, but occasionally gracious and beautiful democratic process of discussion and debate, and sometimes ending with a vote, we all, the \u201cdemos\u201d, name the closest approximation to the truth we can discover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That liberal method of truth-seeking is why Unitarian Universalist sermons are heavy on questions and light on answers.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s not my place to tell you the truth.\u00a0\u00a0You have as much access to the truth as I do.\u00a0\u00a0Our job, all together, is to listen to each other, to share our experiences, to tell our stories, to reason together, to explore and experiment together, to bring in perspectives beyond our congregation like the words of scripture, sure, and poetry and philosophy, and so on.\u00a0And what we don\u2019t accomplish during worship we then stay after for coffee hour and keep hashing out in Sanctuary Reflections, until we come as close as possible to the truth, at least for today, until we take up the quest again next week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            It\u2019s a democratic route to spiritual enlightenment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            And in our church governance, we follow the same liberal, democratic method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The power to lead begins with each one of us.  When you sign the membership book, you agree to be one of those access points to the strategy of the best way forward for our church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            At congregational meetings, three times a year, we educate ourselves about the state of the church, we discuss important issues and sometimes take a vote, we imagine our future together and approve a budget to fund our work toward our vision, and we elect our leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            As members of a democratic church we honor the contributions of all.  We gather, as we said in our Call to Worship:  \u201cas leaders, as servants\u201d \u201cas ears, as voices\u201d  \u201cas memory, as hope\u201d.  And this couplet I particularly like, \u201cWe gather as wisdom, as folly.\u201d  As members of a democratic church, we recognize our responsibility, as we sang in our Opening Hymn:  to \u201cBe that guide whom love sustains, be that helper nothing daunts, be that builder trusting good, be that teacher faith directs, be tomorrow\u2019s pioneer!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Our congregational meetings are a direct expression of our democracy.  Outside of those meetings we entrust decision-making to the leaders we elect to represent us.  But our leaders understand, and we understand, that their power to lead comes from us.  The members of the Board may feel called to leadership.  They may have some special skills and abilities that we think will be helpful.  They may have the time available to serve.  But fundamentally, most importantly, they are us.  Their power derives from us, not from any special ordination, or strength, or wisdom, or wealth, or blood line.  Like all of us they are good enough, smart enough, and strong enough, to serve, but their legitimate power comes from the collective morality, wisdom, and power of the demos expressed through them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            And when their term is up, we take our power back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            And if they slip into serving their own vision instead of actuating our vision, we hold them accountable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            And if they abuse their power, that is, if they mis-use our<\/em> power, we remove them from power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            At least that\u2019s the way it\u2019s supposed to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            But what if the people don\u2019t do the job of holding their leaders accountable?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Or what if, having failed to hold their leaders accountable for so long the accountability structures are themselves degraded to the point that the people are no longer able to hold their leaders accountable?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            What then?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            This is the crisis of democracy our nation is currently facing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I\u2019ve been repeating a phrase several times a week since President Trump\u2019s inauguration.  It\u2019s an aphorism about democracy attributed to the early 20th<\/sup> century journalist and social critic H. L. Mencken.  He said, \u201cDemocracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            We\u2019ve certainly been getting it good and hard for the last few weeks.  We\u2019ve reeled from fantasy, to nonsense, to chaos, to not just the daily outrage but multiple outrages, daily.  Ill-thought Executive Orders dropped on unprepared agencies and then reversed a day later.  The wildest notions defended as reasonable proposals.  The elevation of unqualified sycophants into the most powerful positions of government.  Humiliating abuse of our friends and allies.  Gleeful thwarting of international law.  Denial of plain constitutional provisions.  And mocking of the most basic standards of human decency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            You can provide your own examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The tone seems to be, \u201cI dare you.\u201d  I dare you to hold me accountable.  You levers of democracy, I dare you.  Try and stop me and my billionaire cronies from directing public funds to the programs we support and cutting off others, despite the instructions of Congress, despite the consequences to global health or the environment.  Try and stop me from grabbing real estate around the globe, despite sovereign nations, by fiat or force.  Who\u2019s going to stop me?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Republican led Congress won\u2019t stop me.  The Democrats can\u2019t stop me.  Protestors in the streets of downtown Los Angeles spray-painting \u201cViva Mexico\u201d on the sides of historic buildings, won\u2019t stop me.  If I order the Army Corps of Engineers to open the spillway of a Federally-controlled dam in the San Joaquin valley, Governor Newsom can\u2019t stop me. I\u2019ll do it by law, if the law allows, or I\u2019ll step beyond the law, dare someone to sue me, and see you in court.  And if the court rules against me, I\u2019ll dare the court to enforce their ruling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is where we are.  And I am as unsure where we go from here as anyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I do know is how we got here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long before our current rogue President, we failed in our duty to hold our leaders accountable.  We failed to do our job as citizens of a democratic nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We failed to care.  We failed to pay attention.  We failed to educate ourselves.  We failed to do the hard work of discussing sensitive issues across differences.  We failed to embrace compromise as a success in a pluralistic nation.  We failed to honor the slow work of persuasion in making cultural change, because canceling and cutting off was so much easier.  We failed to tend to those who wouldn\u2019t come along quickly.  We didn\u2019t listen.  We nurtured our theories of systemic oppression and forgot to ask the suffering among us what would actually help ease their pain.  We got so good at lifting up the identity of each precious individual that we forgot the obligations of our common humanity.  We didn\u2019t sympathize as the world rapidly changed so long as it wasn\u2019t our friends who were troubled by the change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We failed to hold Congress accountable for doing their job.  We didn\u2019t complain as the Executive branch amassed more and more power to itself, as long as it was our President signing the Executive Orders.  We analyzed and named the many structural flaws in our democratic system:  the out-sized weight given to small states in the Senate, partisan gerrymandering, the undue influence of money, the electoral college, the difficulty of amending the constitution, and we fretted, but we didn\u2019t do the work to fix it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not that it was your job to fix it.  It\u2019s not my job to create policy, or write laws, nor your\u2019s either.  We\u2019ve got the rest of life\u2019s work to do.  That\u2019s why we have a representative democracy.  But it is our job, as citizens of a democracy to know who\u2019s running for office, to elect the best, and then to hold them accountable.  That\u2019s where we failed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s our job in a democratic nation or democratic church to take seriously the job of choosing our leaders.  Not to choose a leader merely because they\u2019re willing, or choose the person who seems eager for the job but maybe not from a genuine motivation of public service.  It\u2019s our job to stay involved with our leaders after they are elected.  To monitor the issues the leadership is considering and offer our opinions:  input before the decision and feedback after.  To support our leaders through the challenges of governance, but to hold them accountable for the responsibilities of governance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a democracy, we know that our leaders are regular people just like us.  If our leaders were anointed by God, we could expect something more than mere humanity.  But we would be disappointed, as every King or Emperor who ever claimed divine wisdom, goodness, or strength eventually proved themselves human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We know that while different people have different gifts, no person is different in kind from the rest of us.  And thus, no person is exempt from the same flaws as the rest of us.  We know we will elect flawed leaders because we are flawed people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the genius of the democratic process is that from a group of flawed people something better than any one of us can emerge.  What\u2019s required, then, for our leaders to succeed, is that once we elect them into their positions of power, they remain within the democratic system.  They will take all of their natural human flaws into office with them.  And that\u2019s OK.  We know how to accommodate human flaws, by subjecting everyone to the same rules of democracy:  discussion, debate, advise and consent, checks and balances, division of powers, term limits, whether you\u2019re the Mayor of Los Angeles, the Interim Minister of the Studio City UU Church, the President of the Board of Trustees, or the President of the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that kind of accountability takes diligence, and that\u2019s where we failed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last thirty years or so we have allowed the office of President to exist more and more outside of the systems of democratic accountability.  In many cases, the power of the Presidential office was checked only by the humility and decency of the office holder.  The danger we face now is that we have elected a President without humility or decency who is now intent on stepping entirely outside the bounds of accountability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We will always elect flawed leaders.  And democracy itself is no guarantee of good outcomes every time.  We elected our current President democratically.  We rewrote the UUA Bylaws through a democratic process.  So we follow the process, we take a vote, and we deal with the consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDemocracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are getting it good and hard now.  What we aren\u2019t getting is what we want.  Some want this, of course, but not the \u201ccommon people\u201d to use H. L. Mencken\u2019s phrase.  I still have faith in the American people.  We don\u2019t want this baffling mixture of pettiness and vindictiveness, the monstrous mixed with the juvenile.  Even where the policy is supported, the politics aren\u2019t.  That\u2019s my faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get what common people truly want:  lives of meaning and purpose, stability and security, personal pride, feelings of worth and self-respect, physical health, hope for the future, beauty, pleasure, freedom, and so on, we must rebuild our democracy.  This polarized, swinging back and forth, victimized by the whims of a presidential king and hoping that next time it\u2019s our king that takes over, will not get us what we want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That means lifting up again our portion of the democratic load we have neglected.  Not just electing leaders to their positions, but holding them accountable in their positions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope that the accountability structures still available to us will hold and we\u2019ll use them effectively:  the courts seem to be holding so far, the budget talks in Congress next month will be another chance to curtail executive overreach, the mid-term elections two years from now will be crucial.  Past the current crisis, though, we must accept the reality of the deeper rehabilitative work necessary.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because we are flawed people, we will always have flawed leaders.  But together, feeling the power rising through us, lending our power to leaders but never giving it away, a flawed people with all our wisdom and our folly, can move as a whole into a better world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because leaders are human, they make mistakes. If the leader is a king or a tyrant, the people must simply… Read more Flawed Leaders for Flawed People<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4108"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4744,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4108\/revisions\/4744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}