I hope everyone has had a chance to read this pledge brochure that came in the mail around two weeks ago. We’ve got some extras if you did not receive it.
The Church You Choose is the headline. Or, to be more precise, The Church UU Choose.
We have to thank Kip for this language. From the very beginning of planning for this year’s pledge drive, it’s been the team’s inspiration and North Star. And I hope it resonates with you.
This church–West Shore–as the church I choose. This church–West Shore–as the church you choose.
Choice, you see, is about power. Your power and mine. Power, which can be felt most strongly when it acts in opposition to other power, as in a tug of war.
The fact is, when you choose this church, you really are engaged in a kind of tug of war against opposing forces that I believe are very harmful. You really want to win this tug of war. You want to do that for yourself, for the people you love, and for the nation at large.
It is a truism that just as an ax dulls from constant use, so does a human being. Time taken away from ordinary responsibilities, for the sake of spiritual renewal, means greater overall effectiveness and more life satisfaction, not to mention personal soul growth. Yet American life in our day is a tug of war with forces that want to keep people entangled in the pursuit of professional and financial success. American life pulls all people towards this, even children. Even children feel the pull, as their parents encourage them to stay busy excelling in sports, becoming proficient at musical instruments, or developing other skills so that, years later, their resumes might stand out to college admission committees, enabling them to get into the school of their dreams. But they’re on the treadmill by the time they’re five or so! It happens at the expense of free time, boredom time, daydreaming time which, in their own way, are tremendously nurturing. In this way, kids and adults navigate daily schedules that are, simply, exhausting. There’s not even time to meet your next-door neighbor.
Or, to go to church on a Sunday? How to do that, when your life already feels like a stretched-out rubber band ready to snap?
This is, I would say, the main reason why forty million Americans have stopped attending church in the past 25 years. This statistic is unheard of in all of our history. That’s fully 12% of the population.
But here you are, today, in the church you choose. You are winning the tug-of-war. Good for you!
And it matters. Every time you participate in this community, you are inoculating yourself from loneliness. You are inoculating yourself from despair. You are inoculating yourself from the illness that is the American Dream fantasy of “onward and upward forever.” Other cultures, you know, promise that there shall be an end, one day, to this daily grind. But American culture promotes an entanglement that never ends. Often enough, when Americans retire, they have no clue what’s next for them. All along, the individual, unlimited “onward and upward” success ideal has been held up to them as the meaning of life from birth to death. But now that they have “aged out” of this, what is left? What is next? Some retirees of course prosper. They find their way into a truly satisfying retirement experience. But there are enough people who do not. They end up dying too young. They feel useless, their lives feel meaningless, and they simply give up.
This is but one concrete consequence of the “bowling alone” dynamic of current American culture. American culture wants you to forego the pleasures of community and friendship so you can get busy in maximizing your personal bowling score (that is, what your paycheck looks like, or how big your house is, or how many toys you have, and so on). American culture would even teach you how to meditate, but only so that you will be a more effective bowler and make more of a contribution to the capitalist machine. It’s not really about the health of your spirit. It’s about the economy wanting to profit off of your productivity.
But my question to you is, Who wants to bowl alone? That’s no fun at all!
And, when the game is all done, it won’t matter what your score is anyway. What will matter is the people you’re with and the memories you created together along the way.
We’re living in a tug-of-war time. There is bowling together with your chosen church family–with all of the past memories and memories yet to be made–and there is bowling alone. That’s the tug of war right there.
But we can also feel this tug-of-war in a very different context. In this case, the tug-of-war is between people who believe in the separation of church and state and people who dearly desire them being clumped together. Christian Nationalism is on the rise today, and Christian Nationalism wants to reserve the right to choose only for a narrow tribe of Christians. No one else gets the right (including the liberal Christians in this congregation and beyond). No other choices count. Other choices get swept off the table and thrown away.
I mention this because you need to know (if you don’t already) that when we Unitarian Universalists speak of choosing church, we speak with a voice that is hundreds of years deep. We speak with a voice that is a symphony of voices from many times and places. This is not just some superficial idea for us. When we invoke the language of choosing our church, we are drawing deeply from the well of our inspired theological tradition.
In 1568, the first and only Unitarian King in history—King John Sigismund—issued the Edict of Torda which established freedom of religious choice within and among the churches of Transylvania (now the northern region of Romania). King John essentially said that church ought to be a place where people allow each other freedom of conscience and freedom to publicly express their conscience. No one has the right to silence another’s sincere convictions, for, as King John said, “Faith is the gift of God.” This was unheard of, in his day. To many, it was outrageous. But freedom to choose became the law anyhow.
From King John’s lips to our ears today. For almost 500 years, choice has been our tradition. Choice is a key part of our identity as a liberal religious community.
And, we all know what happens when choice is taken away. When the power of the state and religious power become one. We only need to look again at our history as a religious people to see this.
October 27, 1553. A cold and rainy day in Geneva, Switzerland. A procession of people are heading outside the city’s walls to a hillside, where a man named Michael Servetus is to be burned at the stake, with a book strapped to his thigh called The Restitution of Christianity. It was a book he himself had written; he wrote it to save Christianity from some particular Christians; it was why he was to be burned. Burned for heresy. Burned for proclaiming a message that authorities felt would lead others to believe wrong things and so put them in threat of eternal hellfire and damnation.
To prevent such permanent torment for others, the authorities would subject Servetus’s body to temporary torment. The temporary torment was permissible, to secure a greater good for all. This was the logical thinking at the time.
It was, to put it crudely, the most cost-effective course of action.
Servetus had to go.
Because he was a radical. He was a radical Protestant reformer. He wanted full transformation of the church, not one that’s just mediocre and half-way. His far more famous fellow reformers, Martin Luther and John Calvin, had severed the relationship between the state and the Catholic Church in Germany and in Switzerland, but then they turned right around and created new alliances between the state and their own churches. And then, they actively sought to leverage these alliances to end freedom of religious choice.
But, to the radical reformers, like Servetus, this church-state alliance was itself an example of human ignorance and corruption. When folks are stripped of choice, integrity in religion becomes impossible. Religion becomes a forced, second-hand sort of thing. It becomes more like the rule of a tyrant than the sort of guidance that liberates and sets the spirit free.
Servetus was our ancestor. Servetus’s spirit lives on in the separation of church and state, and he died in its defense.
But now, here we are, 471 years after Servetus’ death, and Christian Nationalism is the latest threat to religious freedom and the ability to choose. Christian Nationalism in our day is galling and frightening simultaneously. Christian Nationalism in our day far exceeds what we saw in 1954 when the phrase “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance, or in 1956 when “in God we trust” was adopted as the country’s official motto. This is bad enough, to people who affirm church-state separation.
But now–these days…. It’s January 6th, 2020, when Donald Trump supporters crashed the Capitol, and people were carrying images of MAGA Jesus–Jesus wearing the “Make America Great Again” hat. It’s one of the protesters caught on camera, praying on the Senate floor, saying “Thank you for filling this chamber with patriots that love you, and that love Christ.”
Christian Nationalism, says The New York Times, is essentially “the belief that Christians should rule. This,” it goes on to say, “is the heart of the Seven Mountain Mandate, a … movement emerging from American Pentecostalism that is, put bluntly, Christian identity politics on steroids. Paula White, Donald Trump’s closest spiritual adviser, is an adherent, and so is the chief justice of Alabama, Tom Parker, who wrote a concurring opinion in the court’s recent [in vitro fertilization] decision. The movement holds that Christians are called to rule seven key societal institutions: the family, the church, education, the media, the arts, business and the government.”
That’s The New York Times. Add to this what the magazine Christianity Today has to say, when it asks: “How is this dangerous for America?” Answer: “Christian nationalism tends to treat other Americans as second-class citizens. If it were fully implemented, it would not respect the full religious liberty of all Americans. Empowering the state through ‘morals legislation’ to regulate conduct always carries the risk of overreaching, setting a bad precedent, and creating governing powers that could be used later be used against Christians. Additionally, Christian nationalism is an ideology held overwhelmingly by white Americans, and it thus tends to exacerbate racial and ethnic cleavages. In recent years, the movement has grown increasingly characterized by fear and by a belief that Christians are victims of persecution. Some are beginning to argue that American Christians need to prepare to fight, physically, to preserve America’s identity, an argument that played into the January 6 riot.”
That’s Christianity Today, a Christian magazine, and it hates Christian Nationalism. Christian Nationalism “is calling evil good and good evil; it is taking the name of Christ as a fig leaf to cover its political program, treating the message of Jesus as a tool of political propaganda and the church as the handmaiden and cheerleader of the state.”
Can I hear an Amen if this concerns you?
Can I hear an Amen?
But you know what is especially ironic about what I mentioned earlier, regarding the mass exodus of folks out of church–the forty million Americans who have stopped attending church in the past 25 years? What is especially ironic–supremely ironic–is that “people become even more entrenched in their political views when they stop attending services.” This insight, by the way, comes from sociological research conducted by Jim Davis and Michael Graham, reported in their book entitled The Great Dechurching. Here’s a summary from The Atlantic: “Though churches have a reputation in some circles as promoting hyper-politicization, they can be depolarizing institutions. Being part of a religious community often forces people to get along with others—including others with different political views—and it may channel people’s efforts into charitable work or forms of community outreach that have little to do with politics. Leaving the community removes those moderating forces, opening the door to extremism.”
Only 54 percent of Christian nationalists attend church regularly. 46 percent of them, in other words, don’t choose church. It doesn’t mean that they’ve stopped identifying as Christian, now. It only means that they lose the chance to be educated about what their religion really means and what Jesus actually stood for. And so, they are less able to spot a fake MAGA Jesus from the real one. The Jesus who really did preach service to the poor and that “the meek will inherit the earth” becomes supremely strange to them, and this Jesus is derided as weak, as woke, as false. Give me the true Jesus, they say, and folks from Donald Trump to Russian disinformation specialists deliver.
They become more malleable, more manipulable, more easily wielded as some politician’s tool to do horrible things.
This church is in a tug-of-war with that.
This church is in a tug-of-war with that.
When you choose this church, it’s not just for yourself. It’s for this nation.
Choose this church, and you are helping solve the problem of depolarization.
Last Sunday was a sunny, warm spring day, but instead of being outside to enjoy the beautiful weather, 50 people chose to attend the “Bridge the Gap” workshop here in Baker Hall. The goal of the workshop was to explain a depolarization program called Braver Angels and to help people build skills to engage in conversations with people of differing points of view.
That’s exactly what I mean when I say, Choose this church, and you are helping to stand up forces of depolarization like Christian Nationalism.
Choose this church!
Now, we all know how Cleveland was in the path of the total solar eclipse of this past April 9th. Many of us put on those funky, smoky eclipse glasses to watch the sun disappear behind the moon’s shadow and to experience midnight at 3:15 in the afternoon.
No birds sang. Wasn’t that odd?
That image of the eclipse: to me, it was so wrong, so strange, so unlike anything you ever normally see. I thought in that moment that if I ever were to see a literal UFO, this is what it would feel like. It sent shivers down my spine.
And, we all watched together. If you were watching, I wonder if you felt the special sense of connection with all of humanity. Bina Venkataraman, in her Washington Post article entitled “Why so much fuss about an eclipse?” spoke to this. She says, “Post-pandemic, many of us feel less a part of our communities. In a polarized country and a war-struck world, we lack common cause. Amid this disconnection and alienation, a solar eclipse is an opportunity not only for awe, wonder and escape — but for binding ourselves to the past and future of humanity.”
I completely got what she was saying. But then I found myself saying out loud, “But what the heck?” I was sitting on my couch at the time, and I said that so loud that the cats got startled and scrambled away. And I kept on with my rant. “Why in the world must people wait for eclipse events when they can experience common cause as part of their regular church experience? Whay wait years for an eclipse when awe and wonder can find you through a great church service?” “Why in the world?” “What the heck!”
It’s in your power–that’s what I’m trying to say.
It’s in your power.
We are in a tug-of-war with dangerous and destructive forces today.
That’s why your choice makes all the difference.
So, choose this church.
Choose this church.
But remember: the choice must involve your financial gifts. It’s yet another consequence of church-state separation. The state doesn’t pay the church’s way. And, we don’t want the state to do that. We want to pay our own way. We want that. It’s on us.
This is the price of religious freedom.
Religious freedom is not free.
If you are among the 23% of members of this church who are not now making an annual pledge, I ask you respectfully but frankly, please reconsider your decision about that.
West Shore can’t exist without people choosing it, and this must include your financial choice. Whatever your bank account looks like. Every gift counts. Every gift is appreciated.
Would you now consider choosing West Shore by making your annual pledge?
Spiritflow 