This morning I want to speak to some of the issues in this election. Not everyone likes ministers to speak on political issues -- especially if they disagree with the minister’s opinions -- but the practice of ministers in our faith tradition delivering election sermons goes back to the beginnings of both our nation and the organization of Unitarian and Universalist congregations in America.
While we don't usually promote individual candidates, we do struggle to articulate what we believe the pressing religious and moral concerns of the nation are. We also believe that though religion should have no official status in government each of us has a duty to live out our religious beliefs by helping to elect those candidates who will do their best to enhance the quality and future of human life in this nation and on this fragile planet.
Please be aware that what I say this morning – and every Sunday – is my own personal opinion. I do not speak for you or this church. I try to speak with a prophetic voice, but prophets are not always right. My task is to challenge you to reflect on your own beliefs and how you live out those beliefs.
I don’t know about you, but this election is driving me crazy. I can’t believe it’s so close. I imagine all of us are getting a bit frayed at the nerves, so to relieve some of that stress let me share this piece of humor. For some reason, this question wasn’t asked during the debates, but here it is: Why did the chicken cross the road?
VICE PRESIDENT GORE: I fight for the chickens and I am fighting for the chickens right now. I will not give up on the chickens crossing the road! I will fight for the chickens and I will not disappoint them.
GOVERNOR GEORGE W. BUSH: I don't believe we need to get the chickens across the road. I say give the road to the chickens and let them decide. The government needs to let go of strangling the chickens so they can get across the road.
SENATOR LIEBERMAN: I believe that every chicken has the right to worship their God in their own way. Crossing the road is a spiritual journey and no chicken should be denied the right to cross the road in their own way.
SECRETARY CHENEY: Chickens are big-time because they have wings. They could fly if they wanted to. Chickens don't want to cross the road. They don't need help crossing the road. In fact, I'm not interested in crossing the road myself.
RALPH NADER: Chickens are misled into believing there is a road by the evil tire makers. Chickens aren't ignorant, but our society pays tire makers to create the need for these roads and then lures chickens into believing there is an advantage to crossing them. Down with the roads, up with chickens.
PAT BUCHANAN: To steal a job from a decent, hardworking American.
The wonderful thing about our country is that every election invites us to be involved in the continual creation of this nation. To refuse to be involved in our political process isn't only irresponsible; it's an abuse of our freedom and power; it's an insult to those who fought for that right and to all of those around the world who have neither freedom nor power.
Like many Americans I enjoy a good political campaign. I remember my first political campaign when I was a college student. I worked for the election of LeRoy Collins as a United States Senator of Florida. I went door-to-door handing out literature and trying to convince people in a conservative area to vote for a liberal. It was a real education for me.
I took a lot more abuse in my next campaign. It was 1968. I had just turned 21, the legal voting age at that time. Five years earlier I had lost my hero, John Kennedy. And then I was shocked by the murder of two more of my heroes: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. I was devastated, and yet I still looked for hope.
Impetuously I decided to hitch-hike with my younger brother from Jacksonville, Florida to Chicago, to campaign for "Clean Gene" McCarthy at the Democratic Convention. What an education I received in Chicago!
Coming into Chicago I was proud that I would participate in the democratic process by campaigning for my candidate. When I left Chicago I felt fortunate to be escaping with my life. In Chicago I lost another hero: the democratic process itself.
What I've learned through my participation in those campaigns as well as others is that there is a big difference between the distorted democratic political system we live under and the true spirit of democracy. What we need to ask ourselves, during this election and at every critical crossroad of our future, is whether we are singing the true song of America, whether we're singing from the soul of the American people, or are we simply parroting the preaching of the powerful.
America is not easy to celebrate since we all have a different vision of what our nation is and what it should be. I've been searching for America for many years now, and I still am unsure of what it is. I searched for America at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, at Resurrection City in Washington D.C., at People's Park in Berkeley. And I have searched for America every time I have struggled with an issue that affected this country and its people, and every time I've walked into the voting booth.
What is America? Walt Whitman writes, “I hear America singing,” but what is the American song?
It was Samuel Johnson who said that "[Americans] are a race of convicts and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging." Needless to say, Sam was not very popular with the early American colonists, and neither was that elitist attitude.
Those early Americans were much like ourselves in many ways. They yearned in an almost irrational and in certainly a revolutionary way for one prize and one prize only, for one ideal that was the most risky of all ideals, and the most dangerous. They coveted, they worshiped, they fought for liberty.
And when you cut through all the campaigning hype, the election-year pontificating that is cluttering the airwaves now, when you listen closely to the quiet song beneath the noise, what you will hear is the song of freedom.
I am concerned that our democracy is lacking in the freedom we so prize and at the same time fear. One way in which we lack freedom is that we have been given the choice of only two candidates running for the highest office in the greatest democracy in the world. All other candidates -- especially Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan -- are essentially eliminated from the race and their ideas are dismissed from the public arena by not being allowed the same media coverage and financial support as the other candidates.
By allowing only two men whose campaigns are paid for by the largest corporations to run for president there is a natural tendency for both to compete for the most moderate of the electorate, leaving many people without a viable choice.
Why do you think so many people just don’t care? Why do you think the ratings for the presidential debates were so low and that over 40% of the American public does not even pay any attention to politics, and not even 50% of the adult population votes?
A significant reason why people just don’t care is that they have so little choice in who will be elected to office. Haven’t you as a parent used that tried and true technique of giving your children only two choices to choose from and making those choices as similar as possible? The reason of course is that we rightly don’t trust their judgement at such an immature age.
But the same technique is being used on us. We must choose between only two candidates, both of whom have been chosen for the most part by the wealthy and powerful, and both of whom have all too similar of an agenda.
Unlike Ralph Nader I do see some essential differences between George W Bush and Albert Gore. I’m especially concerned about who gets to pick the next Supreme Court justices. But Bush and Gore – having no one to challenge them – have essentially agreed not to deal with many of the pertinent issues for fear of losing the treasure trove of moderate voters.
The result with this election as with every election is an avoidance of the most significant problems that face us, such as health care, campaign finance reform, the neglect of a generation of children, forging global relationships that place people before profits, and determining a foreign policy suitable for a post-Cold War world.
What we hear too often from the candidates is political pandering, a denial of the crises surrounding us, quick-fixes to complex problems, and personal attacks. What passes for politics makes a mockery of our democracy and makes me question our future as a nation. Perhaps Paul Valery was correct when he defined politics as “the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.”
We are missing in America today a genuine dialogue about the ethical issues in our society. Jim Wallis writes in his book, The Politics of the Soul:
Liberalism is unable to articulate or demonstrate the kind of moral values that must undergird any serious movement of social transformation; the critical link between personal responsibility and societal change is missing on the left. Conservatism, on the other hand, still denies the reality of structural injustice and social oppression; to call for individual self-improvement ... while ignoring the pernicious effects of poverty, racism, and sexism is to continue blaming the victim.
Wallis’ point is that, Both ideological options fail to deal with the enormity and complexity of the social crisis we now confront. Real solutions to the critical issues of our day require a much deeper understanding of the causes of the crisis as well as the willingness to have an open dialogue about the most effective, ethical way of solving that crisis.
But let us not forget that the shallowness of today’s politics is just as much our fault as the politicians. The American public has not held our politicians accountable for their deceit, corruption and manipulation, and so naturally they continue to behave as they always have.
If political candidates were forced to face a knowledgeable public who held them accountable for what they say and do, then we would be able to greatly improve the quality of our leaders. Perhaps the major factor in the crisis of democracy is the failure of citizens to challenge our representatives to enter into genuine dialogue with each other and with the American people.
Just imagine what we could do if both the Democratic and Republican parties, along with the other candidates and parties, would sit down together to truly dialogue in a civil fashion about education, the economy, health, racism, and violence.
And what if they invited all Americans to join in that dialogue, in our churches, at our work places, in our schools, and in our homes. Can you imagine the kind of solutions we could come up with? Can you imagine the spirit of cooperation and enthusiasm that kind of creative process would generate? A spirit of dialogue is what we should demand of our leaders -- and ourselves.
I’m proud that this church is a place where we can dialogue about the political and religious issues of the day without fear of censure or ridicule. Unitarian Universalism has always proclaimed the need for rational dialogue between people of different faiths, cultures and politics.
I believe the most critical issue we need to discuss -- and that is being ignored in this campaign -- is economic justice. We now have a lopsided division of wealth in this country that is unprecedented. In the 80's and 90's practically all the wealth generated in our nation went into the pockets of the wealthiest among us. The income of the top 1% went up 61.6%. The bottom 80% of the population—and this includes almost all of us—gained 1.2%. Isn’t that astounding?
Marilyn Sewell, my colleague and the speaker at this year’s Service of the Living Tradition at our General Assembly, reminded us that, “We are now in a second Gilded Age. I believe that the clear and compelling issue in contemporary life is the rise of big money and with that rise, the demise of democracy.”
She quotes Lewis Lapham in Harpers Magazine who writes, "We have two governments – the provisional government, which speaks to the people through pageants, parades, and the press. And then the permanent government, which is a secular oligarchy of the rich and powerful. This government goes about its work quietly. Free expression among the citizens is fine, so long as nothing interferes with the rule of money. Whoever gets left behind, gets left behind.”
Lewis Lapham is right. Why else is finance reform not being discussed in this election by the two major candidates -- even though 86% of Americans want it?
The result of this obscene flow of money to the wealthiest is the formation of a vast underclass who are either wandering the streets or in jail. They have no stake at all in the society, and don't see a way out.
Did you know that one out of 5 of our workers makes less than $6.00 an hour. That's barely $10,000 a year?
· Did you know that the U.S. has a higher proportion of its citizens jailed than any other country in history?
· Did you know that over 20 million Americans cannot read the poison warnings on a can under the sink or a letter from a teacher or the first page of the paper?
· And did you know that the fastest growing population among the homeless is families? The average age of a person who is homeless? Eight years old.
The way many Americans deal with these realities is to shut themselves off behind gated communities. And I don’t mean just the physical gated communities, but the spiritual ones as well. We close our eyes to the poor and hungry and deprived. We want to protect ourselves from having contact with or even being aware of those in our society who are suffering.
And many of those who are suffering are children. Wouldn’t you like to hear a candidate say, "The most important issue in our country today is our children and their future." -- and mean it? Can you think of any issue more vital? Yet I've heard very little from the candidates concerning our children’s future.
The truth is that for many low-income families, wages and family support programs do not cover the cost of basic necessities. Government cutbacks mean that health and family support programs are often unavailable. We need a president who will make the commitment to provide job training, education, shelter, and health care for all those who need it.
Is it economically feasible to provide universal health care for all, food for the hungry and homes for the homeless, jobs for the unemployed and cities that are liveable and safe? Yes, it is!
It is feasible because our values put human life and dignity higher than how much we pay in taxes. It is feasible because if we don't solve these problems then our nation’s future is in doubt.
I would also like a president who will protect our children by standing up to the National Rifle Association – as President Clinton has – and proclaiming that we will not tolerate the proliferation of dangerous weapons that continue to kill our young.
I want a president who will stand up and say that violence against children and women and gays and lesbians and minorities is wrong and will not be tolerated.
And, I want a president who will do everything possible to protect a woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion or not -- with no ifs, ands, or waiting periods. We need a president, a Congress, and a Supreme Court, that recognizes and protects the fundamental right of individual choice in reproductive matters. And we need political leaders who will demand adequate sex education for our children and the dissemination of information concerning birth control and birth control devices to all those in need.
I also want a president who will stand up to the religious right in this country and let them know that America belongs to all Americans and not to a select few who think they are spiritually superior. By stripping government of supernatural authority, the Founding Fathers created an island of freedom around each individual human conscience. If there was one thing they did believe in, to a person, it was the power of the individual, informed by reason, to make personal decisions for him -- or her -- self.
That is why we need a president who will protect the Constitution and Bill of Rights. No one should be allowed to take those basic human rights away from anyone.
This is a momentous time in our history. In Walt Whitman’s words, “I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear...”
The day after tomorrow we add our voice to that song. May each of us make the best decision we possibly can, for freedom and our nation.
Amen.
My Vote May Not Count, but It Sure Does Matter
copyright (c) 2000 by Jennifer Boykin
The U.S. Presidential election is just a few days away. As always, I will dutifully cast my vote. As always, my vote won't count. I lost the value of my vote on the day I met my husband. We belong to opposing political parties.
When Scott and I first got together, we may have seemed like an odd pair. He was quiet. I was definitely more outspoken. We looked different. My husband has had the same conservative hair style for decades. At one point, my hair was short on one side and long on the other. His wardrobe consisted of those sweater vests with little diamonds all over them -- the kind you wear on the golf course after you retire. I had leather skirts, midriff sweaters, and black ankle boots. For the past year or so, I have secretly toyed with the idea of getting my bellybutton pierced. But, since I'm seven months pregnant, that decision will have to wait. (Although, in my present condition, it may actually be easier to do it now!).
However ill-matched we may seem on the surface, on the inside we are a lot alike. We share the exact same values (integrity, loyalty, personal responsibility and accountability), but we often express these values in very different ways. And while we agree on issues like strong families, healthy economies, education, and public service, we strongly disagree about the hierarchical importance of these priorities as well as how we think our government should invest its resources to bring these things to fruition. So, when it comes to who should be President, we never agree.
Each Election Day, my husband -- the Eagle Scout -- rushes to be first to the polls. He never makes it, because some septuagenarian always gets there first. He's usually around the ninth voter. Sometime later in the day, I mosey on over and cancel out his vote.
One or the other of us usually takes the children. They know that our votes won't help either candidate, but there are other, even more important reasons why I vote.
Here are a few:
* I vote to honor every American who ever stood on a battlefield. Not far from my home, victims from the U.S.S. Cole terrorist attack are freshly buried at Arlington National Cemetery. They join the ranks of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have paid the ultimate sacrifice to secure my Freedom. Not voting makes a mockery of their sacrifice as well as the sacrifice of everyone who ever loved them.
* I vote because whatever my beloved Pop Pop saw "over there" during World War II came back with him and -- for the rest of his life -- haunted his dreams. On Election Day, I will remember the time I heard him wake from a nap, screaming in terror.
* I vote because it is very likely that, at some point today, some poor girl in another country will be forced to undergo the sadistic process of female circumcision. I vote because she can't.
* I vote because I wonder what happened to that homeless woman that used to hang out at our library.
* I vote because my great, great grandmother could not.
* I vote because, if I don't, my husband's vote counts. But even more
important, I want our boys to learn that you can peacefully, even lovingly, coexist with others who value things differently than you do.
* I vote because our children will always have plenty to eat and millions of others do not. While our children are sleeping safely at this very moment, some other American mother's child will not survive the night because she and her child are trapped in the tenacious grip of poverty, ignorance, hopelessness, violence, and despair.
* I vote because I want our boys to know that, in spite of all her problems, the United States of America is still the greatest country on the earth. And it is purely by chance -- not by any personal virtue -- that they get to benefit from that.
* I vote because -- and this one is almost too horrifying to imagine -- one day, our sons may be called to protect the Freedom that so many of us cavalierly take for granted today. That means that one of the Futures that could exist for me includes an Honor Guard, a bugle playing Taps, a 21-gun salute, and an American flag whose triangular shape will sit among the soccer and swimming trophies our boys are amassing today.
Many Americans will be "too busy" to vote. Other things will seem more important. Getting to work. Picking up the dry cleaning. Waiting in line for a Grande Latte at the local coffee shop. Cynicism will keep others away from the polls. It's chic to complain and do nothing.
But this Election Day, I will go to the polls. I will vote. It won't
count.
But, by God, it surely matters.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Boykin, M.A.
Legendary Living
Speaker * Author * Personal Coach
My Vote May Not Count, but It Sure Does Matter
copyright (c) 2000 by Jennifer Boykin
