March 2007 Sermons

• 3/4 Sermon -- Dangerous Religion
• 3/11 Sermon -- 
• 3/17 Homily -- The Fiery Gem of Unitarian Universalism
• 3/18 Sermon -- 
• 3/25 Sermon -- A Declaration for Social Justice

March 4, 2006 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

March 4, 2006

Dangerous Religion

Religion is a beautiful institution and religion is an ugly institution. For me this is a basic truth; but to be more accurate, we should say that religion can be beautiful or ugly. It all depends on the goals of the adherents.

I think it is always important to distinguish religion from spirituality, even though they are often used as synonymous terms. In fact they are not the same. Spirituality is in all of us, whether you term that essence of the self as mind, soul, spirit, all sentient humans are born with this spiritual being that some might call conscience, others might call divine spark. No one gives you spirituality; you have it already. The spiritual journey is, from my standpoint, a series of experiences and decisions that we direct, and we can direct our spirits along a continuum from negative to neutral to positive, but we are driving the spirit. At least, we are in the driver’s seat where freedom of religion exists.

Religion by contrast is about institution. That is, the different denominations, sects, or strains of organized religion. We Unitarian Universalists represent one of the sects of Protestantism. These days of war we are also hearing a lot about two of the sects of Islam struggling for power in Iraq, the Sunni and Shiite, but there are more than just the two sects within wider Islam. All of the main bodies of religion (and probably most of the lesser known religions) have subdivisions within them. Religion is the outward manifestation of the inward living spirit. Religion is organization.

Now there is nothing inherently wrong with organized religion; again we UUs represent one of the more liberal strands of organized religion. People organize in all kinds of ways in order to achieve certain ends--and herein lies the real issue: the ends that some groups want to achieve, and the methods they will use in order to achieve those ends.

Organizing has always been the human tool for getting things done, but it has also been abused repeatedly down through our human history. People who have the power to organize, to affect the thinking of other people, have always risen up to achieve both great things and ignoble things. In terms of this quality of we usually call charisma, the only difference between a George Washington and a Fidel Castro is the means to the ends which they hoped to achieve. Now, please do not misunderstand my statement, for that difference is substantial in all our minds, but we should all remember that George Washington was offered the role of King of the this new United States in the 18th Century, which he refused on principles laid down in our Declaration of Independence. He knew how easily a king could, and usually did, abuse such power. Castro, by contrast, began as a man with noble principles, wanting to lift up the great multitude of impoverished people in Cuba, but went the path of absolute power to become yet another dictator. So that difference I called the “only” difference, is a subtle yet terribly important distinction.

Organizations have allowed humanity to achieve great things. Schools, hospitals, government, corporations (both profit and non-profit) all have been wonderful vehicles for the advancement of humankind. But we also know that organizations can be limiting. Like in the Aldous Huxley novel, Brave New World, there is a tendency toward uniformity of thought and behavior that limits creativity. Someone once said about the limitations of corporate organizations in particular: One always fears that in certain corporate environments Thomas Edison might not have had the freedom to invent the light bulb. Instead, Mr. Edison might have come up with just a bigger candle.

The problem pointed to in this statement is the same as Huxley was lifting up in that powerful novel, Brave New World, about selective breeding and stamping out free will and creativity. I reread it summer before last and was surprised by how it continues to speak to the human weakness for power and the human weakness to assent to such power rather than be independent.

My personal belief is that one reason Unitarian Universalism will always be smaller in relation to other doctrinal religions is that there are always far fewer people willing and desirous of personal responsibility than we often assume. There is little doubt that a strong lemming-tendency exists in humanity. There are always many followers and far fewer leaders. This is what ultimately creates the problem of the misuse of power; how easy it is for governments or dictators to lie to the people in order to achieve their varied ends. It also addresses the problem of why the people brave enough to stand up and speak their minds, to challenge the dominant view, are far fewer in number. These independent thinkers often do suffer the wrath of the people who would rather take the pabulum dished out, than look for the substance. Yet, these same independent thinkers are usually lauded in the course of time for their wisdom and bravery. Often it is only after a great deal of suffering has occurred that the wisdom of these brave people is acknowledged.

For all these reasons we know that all religions have the potential to do great good, but they also have the potential to do great harm. So, what makes the difference? How do we recognize fundamentalism or dictatorships in the making? How do we recognize insipient Talibans in the making?

My dad used to quote when my two younger brothers came of age to get our driver’s licenses: The most dangerous part of a car is the nut that holds the steering wheel. I think that is a great line of wisdom, and not just for parents whose children are learning to drive.

The religion scholar Karen Armstrong writes of the reasons for the rise in such dangerous religions as the Taliban of Islam or the various sects of the Religious Right in American Protestantism:

By the 19th century, a new kind of society had emerged in the West to accommodate its new [industrial] economy. A more democratic system of government was found to be necessary. In order to keep the markets buoyant, more and more people had to be brought into the production process, even at a humble level as printers, clerks, or factory hands. That meant that they had to acquire a modicum of education, and the more educated they became, the more they demanded a say in government decisions. In order to capitalize on all their human resources, marginalized groups, such as the Jews in some European countries or the Catholics in England, had to be brought into the mainstream. Thus it was found by trial and error that the only type of society that could succeed in this brave new world was one that was democratic, tolerant, and secularist. A government could no longer privilege one faith and penalize others if it wanted to remain on the cutting edge; scientists and inventors, for example, needed the freedom to pursue their ideas without the hindrance of a conservative religious establishment. Thus religion, which had been central to the old agrarian ethos, was marginalized and sometimes even outlawed.

Armstrong points out what religion scholars have been concluding for at least the last three decades, which is that change in society drives change in religion. When change happens too fast or by force, there will always, unequivocally, be a backlash which we know as fundamentalism. Not just in religion, by the way; this is true in any of the main forces in our lives. I can remember when shoppers flocked to supermarkets for the new “convenience” foods, designed to lighten the burden of the homemaker; now those same foods have become the unhealthy, obesity creating “enemy” foods of modern times.

Reaction eventually also happens in relation to the rise in fundamentalist religion or thinking. Hence the several books published in the past couple of years by such writers as Richard Dawkins with The God Delusion, and Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation.

Harris in his small but potent rebuttal to the claims of the Religious Right in this country in particular, is talking about, as one writer states:

[T]he variety of religions in the world and their mutual antagonism, drawing attention to the religious basis for many ethnic and inter-communal conflicts. There are those who hope for progress through religious tolerance, mutual respect, and interfaith dialogue, but Harris presents that this only makes it more difficult to criticize faith-based extremism. While admitting that spiritual experiences can be valuable and life-affirming, he is concerned that these should not be linked to religious beliefs. He admits that religion may have served some useful purpose for humanity in the past, but argues that it is now the greatest impediment to building a global civilization.

But to show how strong the effect of being willing to be a person of independent mind or free religious expression, on a web site devoted to Harris’s book, one person wrote: [As] New York Times best selling author of books about business, my career will evaporate if I endorse a book that challenges the deeply held superstitions and bigotry of the masses. That’s exactly why you should (no, you must) read this angry and honest book right away. As long as science and rational thought are under attack by the misguided yet pious majority, our nation is in jeopardy.

Now, this is here in America, land of the free, home of the brave, that this writer is afraid to openly state his or her opinion without fear of retaliation. Of course, many people might say that this is the very problem, that people allow self-interest to outweigh their conscience. It is a question for each of us to consider: Would I or will I risk all that makes my life comfortable in order to speak the truth or uphold my right to free religious and political expression?

The amazing thing we see happen repeatedly is that when people will speak out, eventually others will follow. It is that front edge or cutting edge of the plow I mentioned in last week’s sermon. There always have to be those—those of us, even—who are willing to do that cutting edge work. And I say that is the role of our UU faith in a world where all too many people are not allowed free expression. We are that small, sharp (as in intelligent), front edge that breaks the ground for others to push on through. For remember, the plow is a wedge, the cutting edge begins the furrow, but it would not be much of a furrow without the mass behind the leading edge.

The way we recognize incipient fundamentalisms, such as the Taliban was in Afghanistan early 1990s, comes in part from our willingness to recognize our own fundamentalisms. That is, when we expect our way of thinking or our ideas to trump all others, rather than recognize there are always multiple viewpoints to be considered. For it is undeniably true that whatever exists in the wider world, always exists first in someone’s mind/spirit.

Let us take the issue of school prayer as one case in point. After years of a strong separation of church and state stance, we began to see a move toward such groups as the Moral Majority, or the general termed “religious right” even to the extent that fundamentalists took over school boards and tried to institute not only prayer but the teaching of Christian creationism in some places like Dover, PA.

Is it not possible that we would have avoided many of the major lawsuits and claims of religious groups that religion was being stamped out of American life if school boards had taken the position that a moment of silence to begin the day would address the concerns of this group without violating the rights of any others?

My point is that those of us, and I as a card-caring member of the ACLU am in this group, if those of us who took such a hard-nosed stance against any, even remotely religious expression in public venues, had been able to see that our position smacked equally of fundamental thinking, perhaps the reaction by the Christian right would have not been so dramatic.

History is in many if not most ways a series of actions and reactions. Power, whether of the liberal or conservative varieties, is pushed until it gets pushed back. Religion is one of the three most power driven human structures, along with the family and politics. All have great value, but all can become abusive. All will experience this tension between liberal and conservative.

For us, in this liberal faith which so values freedom of religious expression, the need to exercise this freedom is important. Our mission is outlined in our Seven Principles, but these principles are just so many words on paper until those of us who claim them as important decide to live them out. That is sometimes relatively easy, but sometimes in takes courage. To tell you fundamentalist neighbor that you are a Unitarian, and proud of, and not let them devalue your faith is one such act of courage. On the other hand, to be willing to believe that people of good will can have different political views and still be liberally religious, is also an act of courage we are challenged by during election years--but, more importantly, an act of courtesy and respect.

I have never made the claim that it is easy to be a Unitarian. In fact, I believe quite the opposite. For, to be a UU is to be a leader. To be a UU is to be a force for tolerance and acceptance in a world where these two ideas are dangerous to power-mongers. A religion or a nation of personal responsibility is never easy, and is always at risk from incipient fundamentalisms. Even within our UU faith. Whenever someone says to me that this or that idea, or form of religious expression, is not UU, I recognize, and so I hope will most of us, an incipient fundamentalism.

There is no single kind or form of fundamentalism, but all forms of fundamentalisms are what give rise to dangerous religion. Fundamentalism is primarily about preserving a narrow viewpoint of any kind. I even know fundamentalist martini drinkers—only gin, or only vodka, only a splash of vermouth! Then you have the Winston Churchill martini, the independent, free-thinker’s martini, which is a liberal portion of gin with a mere glance at the vermouth bottle.

My friends, each of us carries the seeds of fundamentalist thinking. This problem is not them-us, but rather, a drive in all people for self-preservation. It becomes dangerous when we cannot recognize that and assume that everyone will surely come to understand that we are right.

Our faith encourages us, indeed calls us, to openness of ideas; religious, artistic, political and otherwise. For it is only through the free exchange of ideas that we ever make any real progress towards a better, more peaceful and prosperous society. Such openness is also the path toward our personal and spiritual self-actualization. For we can never grow beyond our baser desires without honesty of the self first, which then leads to honesty within the larger group.

May it be that each of us values the role of being a person with personal responsibilities, and a community open the ideas of all so long as they respect the worth and dignity of others. Then our Unitarian Universalist faith will always be strong, and always be relevant.

So be it.

March 17, 2007 Homily

Homily for Carrying the Flame- JPD Service March 17, 2007

Nancy D. Dean

The Fiery Gem of Unitarian Universalism

Greetings from the UU Society of Mill Creek, Delaware, on the Delaware-Pennsylvania border.

Ever since the idea of borders was first thought about people have been drawing imaginary lines around the lands of the world, so much so that we tend to see divisions where none really exist. St. Patrick’s Day reminds us of at least two of those kinds of borders, those that divide countries and those that divide religions. The English and the Irish have a long and troubled history, dealing with both of those divisions. My husband Tom Riley is Irish as far back on both sides of his family as time records, and my family’s heritage is equally English. We always say that our happy marriage is proof that the Irish and the English can get along--but first they have to find neutral ground.

As we well know, our UU faith is often just such neutral ground for many who come from different religious backgrounds which are less amenable to neutrality of political or religious difference.

There is, though, one area of difference that we humans value and celebrate which has to do with those things we call jewels or gems. Jewels or gems are essentially rocks we like versus rocks we don’t value so much. When I was at the Harvard Divinity School, I used to occasionally go to the Natural History Museum and spend an hour or so looking at the vast array of the earth’s minerals on display there. I never ceased to be amazed by the color and variety, the vast array of colors, shapes, crystal formations, and so forth that make up the foundation of earth. Diversity in all its forms, which yet again reminds us that diversity in everything is so important, and Emerson spoke truer than he probably knew when he said that all we need to know of God is in the world around us. In which case, God clearly values diversity.

Yet, of all those hundreds of kinds of rocks and minerals, only some are considered gems, meaning they have special qualities of hardness, color, or brilliance that make them more valuable to people. The most precious of stones are those that have the greatest hardness, clarity, brilliance, and rarity. Some of those that are valued in the jewelry world, as gems, are diamonds, rubies, emeralds, but my favorites are garnets, tiger’s eye, and especially opals. I love opals, although they are somewhat fragile and easily cracked, but they have such character, each is unique; and the best among all the kinds of opals are the fire opals, so called because of the fiery lights of red, orange, blue, and yellow that spark from their depths. They are truly fascinating stones.

Because most ministers are plagued by the curse of finding analogy to religion in everything we see, it was but a moment’s leap for me to see that in many ways our UU faith is like a one of these beautiful fiery stones. Our faith is fascinating for valuing uniqueness over conformity, and valuable for all our differences of spiritual belief, experience, and practice that we hold dear.

The thing that we must not forget, though, is that gems emerge from the pressures of the rocks around them. I grew up in Idaho, among salt-of-the-earth farming folk, and a religion both fundamental and evangelical. I see this as the bedrock of American religion, in a direct line from the religion of our Puritan forebears, and it is from this same bedrock that we UUs have also emerged. So we, like those precious gems, are formed, shaped, made stronger and more beautiful by those forces around us from which we came.

I know that many in our movement worry that we are small in number, concerned that we might not remain viable in the vast numbers of the other religions around us. Yet, like those fire opals, those fiery gems that qualify for jewelry, we are precious in our being as we are; for we are fiery in our thinking, our valuing of religious difference, and especially in our treasuring varied spiritual expression, and that is certainly not common.

Another important part of our human value for jewels is that we want to show that we have them. People do not as a rule stick their gems away in at the back of drawer and ignore them. Most people want to display their precious gems, and proudly. Look around. We wear them as bracelets, rings, tiepins, necklaces, gem-studded brooches and walking sticks, and generally make sure that people can see we have them; that we value that we have them. Of course, centuries of rulers have put them in crowns, diadems, tiaras, to create or impress upon the people the value in the monarchy.

So too should we show how very precious this wonderful faith of ours is to us; we need to wear it, proclaim it, and in all the ways we can let people know that it is special to us; show that we have something of great value, the pearl of great price.

We are the fiery gem among religious jewels. May we show in all we do that we recognize and treasure this wonderful Unitarian Universalist faith; a beautiful and brilliant gem of religion.

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

March 25, 2007

A Declaration for Social Justice

Today is Social Justice Sunday, and you will find Don Andersen and others of the Social Action Committee at a table following the service with materials and opportunities for you to put your faith into action. I am profoundly proud of the work this committee does to help UUSMC live its mission and vision, and say thank you to all of you who give your time and money to the outreach programs of our congregation and in other organizations that do good work for the world.

From the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee statement for Social Justice Sunday, they state:

Your congregation can change the world!

Each spring, Unitarian Universalist congregations nationwide stand together on one pressing human rights issue. By joining UUSC to celebrate Justice Sunday, the members of your congregation will be empowered to take action in support of critical human rights.

On Justice Sunday, March 25, 2007, UU congregations will stand together to end the genocide in Darfur.

I always take pleasure in reminding our congregation about the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, or UUSC, which was formed in 1933, the year Hitler came to power. It was then known as the Unitarian Service Committee (the Unitarians did not merge with the Universalists until 1961). But following World War II, only two organizations were allowed into post-war Europe, and they were the Unitarian Service Committee and the Friends Service Committee (the wonderful Quaker service organization), because we were the only two service groups who did not proselytize, or use service to promote our respective religions. Unitarians and Quakers did good works out of real, unfettered compassion; without any obligation or expectation of adopting our faith and values in exchange for help.

There was a term that emerged in Victorian missionary days, when Christian missionaries went around the world establishing many schools, hospitals, and the like, distributing food, medicine, and doing all manner of good deeds with the aim of “converting the heathen,” and this term was “rice Christians.” A “rice Christian” was one who would go through the motions of conversion to the faith in order to get the food or other benefits which such a conversion would accrue.

Quakers and Unitarian did not force people into such a position. We simply wanted to help, and to give without an expectation of receiving anything. So today we are lifting up the UUSC, which is still strong and doing great work around the world--and with a very low overhead. When you give money to such things as the “Guest at Your Table” program, which is our main program for raising money for the UUSC, you are helping children who are the poorest of the poor. So if you can only give to one such charitable organization, I highly recommend the UUSC.

Each year the UUSC lifts up one special area of concern to focus its time and resources on, as stated:

In spring 2004, the UU community stood together on one special Sunday—the first Justice Sunday—to defend human rights in Burma.

Justice Sunday 2005 focused on defending the human right to water, both in the United States and globally. Access to water is so fundamental to human life that the United Nations recognized it as a basic human right. But over one billion people worldwide lack access to clean drinking water. The resources UUSC provided helped educate many congregants nationwide on this pressing but rarely discussed human rights issue.

Justice Sunday 2006 focused on economic justice by supporting labor rights and living wage. Congregations nationwide united in supporting workers' rights.

This year, as previously stated, the UUSC is focused on the suffering in Darfur caused by the genocide, of now hundreds of thousands, of the mostly Muslim Fur, Zaghawa, and Massaleit ethnic groups in Darfur region of western Sudan, by the Janjaweed militia (Janjaweed translates as devils on horseback) which is made up mostly of Bedouin Arabs and non-Baggara farming people. This all started in the summer of 2003. By 2006, it was estimated by the United Nations that over 2.5 million people had been displaced by the ongoing violence meant to drive the undesirable—from the Sudanese government standpoint—peoples to preserve land and resources for the favored.

I am reminded of how grateful we all should be to the founders of this country who made every attempt to make sure that some people would not be grossly favored above all others because of race, religion, origin and so forth. For the genocide we are seeing now in Darfur is hardly the first in our human history, and probably not going to be the last. And we must ask ourselves, in our UU way, what is it in human beings that allows for such horrible things to happen, and what is it in human beings that allows us to look beyond our selves to want to help those who suffer? It is indeed a paradox of human existence.

Most of our more scientifically minded members would say that our primitive survival mechanism, born of millennia of human evolution has created a “like me good, not like me bad” limbic mind that kicks in when survival is threatened. Whenever we feel like another group, be it racially or ethnically or religiously different group, seems to be rising up and may threaten our existence, we can become as brutal as any in the Balkans or Nazis or the Janjaweed. What moves us toward ever more civilized behavior, towards living as we do in this country in a racial, religiously, ethnically diverse, and pluralistic communities, comes about by replacing our fear with learning. Especially learning that we can live with and furthermore enjoy being in a richly diverse community.

The great Unitarian minister Burdett Backus, echoing John Haynes Holmes before him, wrote: It is the function of religion to inspire in [people] the vision of the higher good they can achieve by . . . expanding the circle of self and using the powerful drive of selfishness for the achievement of something far above itself.

One of the lessons of our liberal religion is that you do not need a religion in order to be a good person, to do good deeds, to live a good and wholesome life. We see that many people live wonderful, altruistic lives, who never cross the doorway of any religious organization. We are born with a spirit/mind/soul, as you will, and then it is up to us to direct that self of self—I shall stick with the term spirit—that spirit towards the positive, to grow in our spirits throughout our life times. For it is clear that we are happier, more contented, more loving people when we do work at being people who live such positive lives. You can also do that without benefit of clergy, or religious organization. But no one of us can ever do as much alone as we can when we join together, especially in the education of our young and ourselves, and in the good works we can do when we band together. That is the true virtue of religious community, that we have a community and that we join together to do something greater than ourselves. That is the beautiful part of human community, especially human religious community.

The Rev. John Haynes Holmes stands out as one of our great Unitarian social justice leaders, a list which includes many of the greatest of social activists this country has known. Holmes spent half a century helping to change situations for the people of this country, as you heard in this morning’s reading. But it was not without personal cost, for his determined pacifism in the face of World War I very nearly cost him his pulpit and the Community Church suffered a loss of membership when those who disagreed with Holmes’ pacifism left the church. Holmes, though, had a vision of the church that went far beyond the normal vision of the church at the turn of the last century, particularly the Unitarian church. Holmes said, "we may ever have the task of making our Unitarianism in this place of so new and wonderful a character that this body to which we are bound, may itself become transfigured by the service we perform . . .." For Holmes, as for most of our visionary UU leaders, to simply sit in a church on Sunday, sing some songs, chat with friends after the service was just the starting place for the real work of religious faith, which was as Holmes would have called it “brotherly love.”

The Rev. Burdette Backus, whose years of great service encompassed the middle part of the 20th Century, taught that science had much to give the world. It was the era of great scientific achievement and many believed science would save the world. Many people still believe that, but what most of our great leaders believe today is that science is but a tool, and it is still the humans who must use those tools for good or ill. Backus also made this point when he said that what humans have been able to do in harnessing the forces of nature, from damming rivers for power to the unleashing of the atom, we must also do with our inner forces. Meaning that we can learn to hold back the rivers of distrust, hate, and prejudice and unleash the forces of compassion, altruism, and love. In his words: [We] must harness the power of selfishness to the broad and noble ends of humanity.

Unleashing human potential was the work of Holmes and those like him within our Unitarian movement. In the Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography, it states of the Community Church under Holmes’ leadership:

[The] Community Church was transformed into a diverse, multicultural congregation. By 1930 it had more than 1800 members of 34 nationalities from six continents. Holmes wrote, "We have rich and poor, high and low, black and white, ignorant and educated, Jew and Gentile, orthodox and agnostic, theist, atheist and humanist, Republican, Democrat, Socialist and Communist. All of which means that we are representative of New York City! . . . It is in this sense that we are a public and not a private institution—a community church, in the true meaning of the phrase."

Today we of this Mill Creek congregation lift up the noble work of social justice. Don Andersen who chairs our Social Action Committee has helped to bring our most activist members together to work on behalf of many worthy issues, bringing to our attention needs and opportunities to do the work of the community congregation that we have said we want to be. In line with our Unitarian Universalist Association, which has been dedicated to the causes of social justice, we here are also dedicated to the causes of social justice. Many of our congregations have been great forces for such causes, and we know that our Seven Principles are in the main about social justice.

But what does it mean to say we are dedicated to the causes of social justice? What are the aspects of poverty, hunger, child labor, slavery, ethnic cleansing or genocide, which we recognize as needing justice?

In general terms, when we say social justice, we are talking about justice for all, not just the lucky or the privileged or powerful. Social justice is ideally fairness for all, regardless of status, position, money, religion, or any other of the many ways humans differentiate one from another. I say ideally, for we know that we are far from any utopian world where all is fair or just or beautiful or peaceful or welcoming or any of the ways you and I would wish for the world to be.

What drives acts of injustice is both social and political. We are a world that has a vast population of over six billion, which is growing far too fast, with dwindling resources. I was hearing on radio program only this week that one of the hottest areas for investment now is water. Whoever owns the water will own the wealth which resides in the water, food, and energy (principally coal and oil). Even now, countries actively hoard water and prevent their neighbors having access, which means crops cannot be grown, and people cannot be fed. All of which means war, with people fighting for control of these two most valuable of resources of oil and water. It is no accident that we did not go to war with North Korea who has created atomic weapons, in opposition to United Nations policy; a country that does have, and proudly claims to have, weapons of mass destruction. We did not declare war on this part of the axis of evil, because the simple truth is North Korea has no resources of value to the west or east. It is a country that builds atomic bombs while millions of its people starve. Kim Jong Il is a dictator of terrible consequence, but there is no oil in North Korea, nor anything of worth that others want, so he is ignored by the great powers.

Social justice means that we care as much for the people of North Korea as we say we care for the peoples of the Middle East, Iraq in particular.

But to bring the discussion a bit closer to home, to make a declaration of social justice, as the UUSC and the UUA both did this year in lifting up the genocide in Darfur, it to say that powerless peoples deserve to be helped even when we have nothing to gain, like oil or water. To bring the subject to this country, and make a declaration of social justice for our people right here at home, is to say that we would rather our communal monies gathered as taxes by states and the federal government should be spent here to help alleviate poverty, to build and equip schools, to provide affordable health care for all of our people, instead of sending our own precious citizens and billions of dollars to keep fighting war far from home, in a place where we understand little of the culture that has now led to a civil war.

And to bring this discussion to this community of faith, to make a declaration of social justice is to say that people within our own congregation will not be forced into bankruptcy as a result of health problems and hospital costs, because the families are without insurance they cannot afford. Or that people lose their homes because of soaring credit card interest rates they are not equipped to handle. Or that people will not have to send their children to under-functioning schools that have governmental requirements that are not funded, and on and on and on. I see all of this, and you see it, too. It is up to us to say that we will not accept the status quo, instead as a community of faith of ethical principles, we make our Declaration of Social Justice whenever and however possible.

Now some naysayers will tell us that making such declarations does little to change things; that this is the way of the world and we cannot do much to alter the awful things in the world. But I say that that way of thinking, that kind of rationalization for doing nothing, is pure balderdash. Balderdash, meaning nonsense; it makes no sense.

It is balderdash to claim that a problem is too big, and therefore we should not waste our time doing anything. John Haynes Holmes and Gandhi certainly went against public opinion with their deeply held beliefs in passivism and non-violence, both of whom greatly influenced Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and thousands of others to struggle for social justice, which continues on to this day, even to this place this morning.

The NAACP, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, the United Nations, the UUSC, and all the many organizations that began with a few people saying this situation is not right, and making in their various ways their declarations for social justice, all these and many more stand in sharp opposition to such negativism. People can and do make a difference every minute of the day, and the good we do in our own lives and for others always begins with a simple desire that becomes a thought which says, in effect, I declare that this can and must be changed. Our individual declarations of social justice matter. They matter because once we say, this war is wrong, the lack of good schools in our cities is wrong, having no health care is wrong, then we begin to speak and act, and, like the drops of water that form the flood, we can come together, as we do here, and we can most assuredly make a difference.

Our Unitarian Universalist faith echoes the words of James in the Christian New Testament, and those of all great religious teachers, and especially our own great UU leaders, to say that faith without works is dead. To make our declaration of social justice is how we begin to do the work that makes our faith a living and wonderfully energizing force for all that is best in human life, both our own lives and the lives of those with whom we share this earthly home.

Send mail to webmaster@uusmc.org with questions or comments about this web site.
Designed by Vega Computing Solutions.
Copyright © 1999-2008 Unitarian Universalist Society of Mill Creek.