September 2012
“The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity. ” —Lord Byron
This past Sunday, I became emotional in the pulpit… again. Ok, truth to be told, I’m always emotional in the pulpit. It’s part of why I never schedule anything for Sunday afternoon, because preaching a good UU sermon will wipe me out, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. I usually maintain enough reserves to make it through the coffee hour, but afterwards I have to go home and sleep for a few hours before I will be able to be worth much at all… and then it’s usually best for me to sit in front of the television and watch a movie.
It’s also why I tell anyone who has anything to talk to me about after the service that they should email me about it. I will listen during coffee hour, I will nod my head and I will even respond somewhat intelligently… and the chances of my having anything I would call “good recall and follow through” are slim. I’m simply operating in what I call my “coffee hour fugue”, a kind of emotional afterglow from the experience of worship, of preaching.
One thing I have noticed is that it was less emotional, less exhausting, and less “coffee hour fugue” inducing when I was mostly travel preaching as when I am regularly presenting worship in a congregation I know, and that knows me. The five years I spent travel preaching, the emotional content I was aware of was mostly just my own. While that was draining, I usually maintained enough energy to make it through the coffee hour and the multiple-hour drive home.
Yet in serving churches in Evanston IL, Midland MI, and now Ventura CA… that is not true. In each case, I believe I am becoming “in-tune” enough with the congregation that I am feeling more of what they feel. When, from the pulpit, I see a congregant with tears in their eyes, I know them well enough to have a fuller appreciation for what all those tears might mean. When I see a congregant laugh, I know them well enough to know some of the parts of their lives that might make laughing difficult. When a congregant comes up to me passionate and energized after the sermon, I now know them well enough to sense where that passion may be coming from (‘cause it is never actually my “wonderful sermon”).
I have said before that I believe we human beings are far more emotional creatures than we are rational creatures. Our ancestors on the evolutionary chain felt emotions far, far longer than we have had anything remotely resembling conceptualized rational thought. Our emotions have had many times many the centuries of development and opportunities to embed themselves into our nature, character and psyche than our capability for rational, symbolic thought has had. I believe that the primary purpose of reason is not to suppress or replace emotions, but rather to allow us to make some order and meaning out of our emotional lives. This understanding of reason accepts that our emotional lives remain the primary influence over who and what we are, and that reason just operates upon that primary influence.
Yet human emotion is often perceived by that reason, and by the outward society that reason reflects, as dangerous. As such, our society has created ways in which emotions can be “safely released”… Think of a football game, where emotions such as aggression, excitement, and anger can be safely released in a controlled manner about a topic that does not truly threaten our survival. Horror movies do the same for fear. Roller coasters do the same for both fear and excitement. Daytime talk shows such as Jerry Springer provide a safe experience of and release of some of our more shadow-filled emotions… jealousy, greed, superiority, etc.
At its least, congregational worship fills a similar role. I know, a shocking thing for a minister to say, to compare what we do on Sunday morning to Jerry Springer. There are some key differences… the first, and most obvious is the emotions that are brought forward in the congregational worship experience. Now, different traditions and different denominations of religious faith work with different emotions on a regular basis. I know that I experienced worship during my childhood in a different faith tradition as a regular emotional flow between superiority and shame. Superiority over all of the “sinners” who would be sent to hell when the judgment day came… and shame over my inability to save them all, and for the ways in which I too was one of those sinners. I know that when I have attended the Pentecostal churches of my mother’s tradition, there was some of that… but there was also the ecstatic emotions of joy, excitement, and connection.
The second key difference between our experience of many other societally sanctioned expressions of human emotion and congregational worship is that, at least in my understanding of the Unitarian Universalist tradition, those emotional experiences are to be shared communally. Experiencing and expressing these emotions is not a solo act. Worship should be a time where we allow the barriers that society creates around our emotional experiences to come down, just a bit… so that we can see one another as emotional creatures. And in seeing that, learn to accept our own emotional selves as normal, and beautiful.
I remember a time after a particular service where I became emotional in the pulpit, and the congregation became emotional with me. After the service, a fairly new member who was a social worker came up to me, quite disturbed. She was concerned that such an expression of emotion in a public way was unhealthy, and that it might even be unethical. Remember, this was after a sermon, so I was in my “coffee hour” fugue… but I think I responded along the lines of that congregations had been experiencing emotions together for thousands of years, and we just needed to be careful of and supportive of one another as we learned to be our emotional selves with one another. Later, that interaction helped me to develop a lens of being more aware of the emotional space of the congregation during the sermon, and to realize that some of the most important pastoral care work a congregation does happens in the Sunday Morning worship service.
Yet, I dream of something more for our time of Worship together than just an expression, even a collective expression, of our emotional selves. I dream of something more than creating a space in the lives of our congregants where it is okay to cry if you are called to cry, or laugh if you are called to laugh. I dream of something more than creating a space in the lives of congregants where it is okay to laugh with someone else, or cry with them. I dream of a space in the lives of congregants and in the life of a congregation where we can come together and not only express our emotional selves, but use the gift of our rational faculty to explore what those emotions mean for our understanding of and connection with life, the universe, and everything.
I want worship that is not only inspirational, but gets at why and how we feel inspired. I want worship that is not only deepening, but gets at why and how we feel deepened. I want worship that is not only challenging, but gets at why and how we feel challenged. I want worship that not only brings us to tears, but gets at why and how we are brought to tears. Not alone… not in a way that diagnoses what is wrong with us or makes us feel inadequate… but in a way that is simply about our learning to trust and care for our emotional souls… together.
I can dream…
Yours in faith,
Rev. David
I try to be a nice person. Really I do. OK, it doesn’t always work, but I deeply believe in the practice of civility and respect toward all people. So I was genuinely sorry when a Facebook friend wrote to say that I had deeply offended her by questioning her integrity, and that we would no longer be friends. I wrote and apologized, but even as I was writing, I knew it was the kind of crappy apology that politicians are known for.
Here’s the thing. I didn’t just phrase something poorly and, as so often happens online, say something that I didn’t mean. She’s right. I did question her integrity. I accused her, I believe, of “being disingenuous at best.” That’s not a very nice thing to say, and I said it. I also meant it.
She is a Tea Party Republican. I am a liberal Democrat. And my faith tells me that that shouldn’t matter, that we share a common humanity. Before Facebook, it didn’t really matter, because our connection was through a shared hobby that has nothing to do with politics. But she is deeply committed to posting the kind of thing on Facebook that just makes me around-the-bend crazy.
Let me say this: there are many political subjects on which I think it is entirely a good thing that people disagree. There is such a thing as too much government and such a thing as not enough government, and people should argue their case about where the line of just enough government falls. Governments should both protect the rights of individuals and act for the common good, and sometimes those two values are in conflict. I believe society is better off when there is lively discussion about how to manage those two important values. There is no one right answer on a whole variety of contentious subjects.
But there are things that simply aren’t true. And when this Facebook friend used a line quoted out of context from a campaign speech Obama gave in 2008—a line in which he was calling for an expansion of the Peace Corps and diplomatic consulates—to declare that Obama was in cahoots with the New Black Panther Party to create an armed Black militia, I just couldn’t let it go. It seemed to me, and still seems to me, that there is no way to come to such a conclusion in a way that has a decent regard for facts, and if you choose to put something out in the world that you have no reason to believe is true, well, then I can’t help but think that you’re “disingenuous at best.” OK, lying.
So here’s the question: is it more important to preserve the human relationship and just let outrageous lies go past, or is it more important to stand up in a public forum and ask that people give some evidence for what they say? Which response is more ethical? Which more spiritual? Can you be genuinely spiritual without being ethical? Is it more respectful to call someone on behavior you think is inappropriate, or is it more respectful to make sure that feelings aren’t hurt, and relationships preserved?
I don’t know the answer to these questions. I just know that this won’t be the last time in the next few months that I will have to choose. What I do know is that I can choose to make the political statements that I put out there in the world scrupulously honest, identifying what is fact and what is conviction, never resorting to name-calling or stereotype. This woman is no longer my Facebook friend, but I will be a better person if I allow her views and her feelings to remind me of what it means when I choose to speak.
Last week, advertisements began appearing at commuter train stations in the county where I live that, it would seem, blame all of Islam for the actions of violent extremists who are Muslim. Debate over the ads here in Westchester, including in the congregation I serve as minister, has centered on the question of “hate speech.” Similar debate is happening elsewhere around other current events as well, including senseless violence against our Sikh siblings, the denial of equal marriage rights to same-sex couples, and the persistence of misogyny in our political arena.
What, we’re asking ourselves, is “hate speech,” and what is the proper response of moral, loving, spiritual people to it?
I should be clear at the outset that I am not seeking a legal definition of hate or hate speech. Im not a lawyer or a judge. Rather, I am asking for a spiritual definition of it. Whether something is right or wrong has little do do with whether it is legal. (This is, interestingly, something on which the religious right and the religious left can agree–even if we differ on what is right and what is wrong.) What is acceptable in a compassionate society is a smaller set of things than what is not punishable by law.
To me, demonizing an entire group for the actions of a few is the epitome of hate speech. The impulse that leads some to vilify all of Islam because there are Muslim terrorists who justify their actions with a misunderstanding of their religion is the same impulse that makes communities protest the building of mosques and deny some among us their freedom of religion. The more we accept dehumanization, stereotypes and lies about groups of people, the more likely we are to accept violence against them–or people who look like the stereotypical images we have of them stored in our narrow minds.
Recent public debate about rape is another example of speech that, frankly, should be unacceptable to all people who seek to shape our society in an image of love and compassion. If we deem it acceptable for anyone to create a category of “legitimate rape,” we are implicitly condoning a culture in which survivors of sexual violence are stigmatized, doubted, and shamed. Women who live in fear of violence should not be verbally assaulted by those seeking to make political points with their “base.”
Finally, if we use our freedom of speech to block another from having the same rights we enjoy, have we not crossed a line that no religion should accept? I believe so. My impending marriage here in New York has no impact on your relationship or relationships with your past, current and future partners. Don’t blame me for the moral decay of our society–blame our increasing tolerance for hate. Take the twig out of your eye before you reach for the speck in mine.
Unitarian Universalist congregations covenant to affirm and promote, among other things, a “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” in my faith, freedom comes with responsibility. It should be so in our society as well.
Just because certain speech is protected by the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution does not make all speech responsible speech.
If you’d like to engage in a meaningful dialogue about Jewish-Muslim relations with respect to Israel and Palestine, you’re not going to get there by calling everyone who disagrees with you a terrorist.
If you’re trying to instruct your followers on the specific ways taught by your faith to lead a moral life, you don’t need to violate my freedom of religion or make me a second-class citizen to do so.
If you’d like to open a dialogue on the sanctity of life, denigrating the lives of women isn’t an appropriate place to begin.
Those of us who believe in compassion, equality and love cannot remain silent in the face of such unacceptable hate. Our goal should not be to silence the haters, but rather to drown out their hate with our love. Where ten people show up to call a group of people nasty names, a hundred others should be present with a message of love and acceptance. Little by little, those who choose to hate will get the message.
Here in Minnesota, where I live, the State Fair is the main thing going on. It upstages even the dreaded back-to-school days which are also dominant in hearts and minds.
In other places where I have lived, State Fairs are about as central to life as, say, roller coasters, or ferret ownership, or balloon rides. That is to say, some people like it enough to spend time seeking it out, most people don’t, and life goes on swimmingly. That’s not the way it is in Minnesota.
I don’t know why it is, but it would never occur to me, or anyone I know, to miss our state fair in Minnesota. Why? We spend too much money, eat too many calories, stand in too many lines. For those of us who are urban, we see animals that we have no interest in seeing the rest of the year, ogle farm machinery we will never in our lifetimes use, and stare at strange things ranging from seed art to butterheads—Princess Kay of the Milky Way, carved live out of butter as she shivers in a refrigerator in her dress and tiara.
And we get so excited about it! I’ve already been twice, and plan to go back at least once more, with friends who like to see and do different parts of the fair. I begin looking forward to it in early August, and begin to plot out trips, buying early tickets to save a few bucks. I like to go once when the fair is just opening in the morning, primarily to see the barns and animals. I go once during the afternoon, to go to the Midway and ride some rides, play a little whack-a-mole, try to win a useless prize with skeeball tickets. And then I like to go once at night to enjoy some kind of concert. This year it was Bonnie Raitt and Mavis Staples—pure heaven!
Truthfully, I think that looking forward to the fair is about as much fun as going. As the nights get colder and the sky is dark later in the morning, as the back to school sales crank up into full swing, the fair gives us something to think about besides the end of summer. How can you dread the end of August when you get to eat a pickle on a stick? How can September be a bad thing when it comes in with seed art?
This year, when I went with a friend on opening day, the two of us were so excited we could hardly concentrate enough to pick a starting place. Eventually we strode over to the horticulture building. The vegetables on display were no better looking than the ones I see every week at the farmers’ market, but seeing them with judges’ ribbons next to them enhanced their importance.
This year, ‘the great get together’ has a sad shadow side. Elections loom. We have, in addition to the bitterly divisive Presidential election, two ballot initiatives introduced by the Republicans to crank up voter turnout in Minnesota: A constitutional amendment that limits marriage to opposite sex couples, and a voter suppression bill which disallows same day registration and demands government issued IDs—disproportionally disenfranchising the poor, people of color, transgender people, and other marginalized folks.
So at the fair, in addition to the universal experiences of food on a stick and gaping at farm animals, there was also an undercurrent of divisiveness. Plenty of people, like me, picked up bright orange fans that screamed “VOTE NO: Don’t Limit the Freedom to Marry” at the Minnesotans United for All Families booth. Meanwhile, I saw many people sporting “Protect My Vote” backpacks. I’m sure they felt as sad and helpless seeing my fan as I felt seeing their backpacks. Trying to figure out how to have a real conversation about it was an insurmountable challenge as we jostled one another in the crowded streets and competed against each other in Midway games.
Despite those differences, the fair was a good place to remember that we have more in common than what separates us. I pray that I will still feel like that the second week of November, when my stuffed animal prizes will have long since been turned into dog toys and cheese curds are but a distant memory.
The furor over Rep. Todd Akin’s astonishingly irresponsible and oft-quoted remarks this week has once again thrown a complex moral, religious, legal and personal controversy in our country into stark relief, the question of abortion.
It seems to me that the burning question about abortion in the United States is not primarily about whether or not any given woman or teenage girl should or can have one, but about whether or not such actions should be lawful: the crux of the matter in this country is around the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade, which cleared the way for abortions to be performed legally in the United States. The language of “pro-life” and “pro-choice” is deliberately inflammatory. I’m not against language that inflames per se (perhaps this essay will demonstrate that), but I prefer to frame this not as an issue of life versus choice, but as an issue of legal access to abortion versus its legal abolition. It is an issue of maintaining the legal strictures in place as a result of Roe v. Wade (RvW), or intentionally altering the Constitution to remove those strictures. So may I suggest an experiment: instead of “pro-life,” I propose “anti-RvW,” and “pro-RvW” in place of “pro-choice.”
There are some positions that I disagree with and don’t understand. Same-sex marriage, for instance: intellectually, I suppose I can generally grasp the opposition to it, but deep in my heart, in the tenderest parts of my innards, I just don’t get it. Abortion is different. I disagree with the propositions and stances of the anti-RvW camp. But I get it. The intentional termination of a pregnancy through medical intervention is indeed a complex and difficult moral issue. Nevertheless, as a religious leader, a citizen-voter, and as a human being, I have to take a stand on what I think is right.
While I applaud the GOP for demanding that Rep. Akin drop his Senate bid, this occurred during the same week that Republicans approved party platform language that calls for a constitutional amendment banning abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. I strongly disagree with this move, but I will openly and freely admit it contains a stroke of internally consistent logic. If one truly believes abortion is murder, then what difference does it make how conception took place? I always felt there was an inherent hypocrisy or cowardice in the political posture of abolishing all abortions “except in cases of rape or incest.” It seems as if those who strike this pose are acknowledging that there are circumstances in which a woman should have a right to choose — just exceedingly narrow ones. “Abortion is murder,” this seems to declare, “but if, say, you’re a thirteen-year-old girl and your father raped you — well, okay then, you can go ahead and get an abortion.” In other words, for a woman or girl to have the right to choose, she can only earn it by unimaginable suffering and humiliation. Why do political conservatives grouse endlessly about reducing the role of government in our lives while endorsing positions that are so aggressively intrusive into the lives of women and girls? If we are going to promote that kind of government meddling in our personal lives, perhaps it would be fairer for both males and females to share the burden. Perhaps what’s needed is a move for a Constitutional amendment to prohibit males from having sexual intercourse with females, unless 1) procreative intent on the part of both parties has been firmly established (and of course the government would need us to fill out government-approved forms and such to declare such intent) , or 2) the male is required to wear a condom or provide legally verifiable proof of his being 100% infertile. If such a law could be passed and enforced, that would diminish the number of abortions spectacularly. If the passing and enforcement of such laws would seem preposterously invasive, why is the imposition of laws that restrict women’s sexual activity considered acceptable?
I do wonder why there doesn’t seem to be far more vigorous preaching and teaching from anti-RvW religious leaders urging men and teenage boys to refrain from having sex, or that we males should at least use birth control fastidiously. Never have I seen a pro-life bumper sticker or talked with an anti-RvW person who has mentioned, in my hearing, the role of males in the whole abortion question. Where is the anti-RvW religious voice calling men and teenage boys to sexual responsibility? Is pregnancy just regarded as a thing that just happens, like cancer or hurricanes, and what follows is all that’s important? What we seem to get from the religious right is the promotion of “education” which urges abstinence. I am not aware that any evidence has ever been offered by anyone to show that such programs achieve their aims.
The religious voices that are anti-RvW come from diverse traditions. What many of these traditions have in common, it seems to me, is an absence of female leadership. There are no female Roman Catholic priests, bishops, cardinals or popes. One person I know and love very much is a Pentecostal Christian and very much anti-RvW; there are no female pastors in this person’s church. I am not saying that religious institutions that bar women from professional leadership positions are not entitled to opinions on the issue of abortion, or any other issue, whether it pertains to women or not. I am saying that the absence of women in leadership roles in those religious communities is not irrelevant — especially if that absence is the result of a deliberate and tenaciously guarded policy.
The anti-RvW movement appears to be motivated by a dream of a world in which abortion disappears. But there is no reason to believe that abortion would disappear if the anti-RvW movement achieved its objectives. Women and girls had abortions before RvW; they just had to take far greater risks to their health and safety. I need not reprise the back-alley, coat-hanger refrains of the pro-RvW movement, but those assertions are correct. Some political and social conservatives claim that if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns; I wonder why more conservatives don’t also argue that if abortions are outlawed, only outlaws will perform them — outlaws regulated by no professional medical organization, licensed by no government, accountable to no one for their training, their competence, the fees they charge, the sanitary conditions (or lack thereof) they provide, or the survival rates of the women and teens upon whom they perform abortions. These are circumstances in which women and teenage girls are maimed and killed. We know this is true because this is what happened in the United States before 1973. It is not clear how a return to such conditions would promote the sanctity of human life.
I saw a bumper sticker recently that said something like:
Africans didn’t choose slavery
Jews didn’t choose the Holocaust
Babies don’t choose abortion
I couldn’t help but think: But that’s the whole point. Babies don’t choose abortion; they don’t choose anything at all. The pregnant woman or teenage girl is the one who has to make all the choices — not just about abortion, but about what to eat and whether or not to quit smoking or what kind of prenatal medical care she is going to receive. Many women and teenage girls have very limited choices around many of those things, but the point is, the above bumper sticker leaves pregnant women and teens entirely out of the equation. And any argument about abortion which leaves pregnant women and girls out of the equation is not only irrelevant and morally suspect, it’s dangerous.
This past summer was the first that my son Adam, who is autistic, didn’t go to camp. At 19, he let us know that he was ready to move on from this kind of experience. He had been working at the local public library a few hours a week during the school year, and he was happy to continue with his job and a program at the high school. So far so good.
The unintended consequence of this transition for Adam was that he has gained an unhealthy amount of weight. Swimming is one of his loves, and I didn’t realize how much exercise he got at camp. It became clear when we made the move from his summer to fall clothes, which no longer fit.
I was going to write a post very much like the one that Peter Friedrichs shared yesterday. One in which I bemoaned the barrage of outrage from all sides of the political spectrum: “President Obama thinks that small business owners don’t actually accomplish anything by their own hands!” “Republican lawmakers swam naked in the sea of Galilee!” Surely people on all sides of the political spectrum can find real and substantive differences to argue about rather than hollering “OMG! OMG!” about the latest manufactured crisis or media-hyped “gaffe.” Surely there is a way for people to discuss genuine differences in a way that allows people to vote for a vision of the future that inspires them.
All the manufactured outrage keeps us from treating one another with respect, and prevents our listening for both our genuine differences and our genuine commonalities. But it also does something else. It makes it harder to determine when something really, genuinely is outrageous. As much as I hate the media pouncing on a single sentence or paragraph casually uttered by a politician (let alone the deliberate spin of what a politician says), some too-frank utterances provide insight into genuinely outrageous beliefs that are more often sugar-coated.
When Todd Akin says that women don’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape” he lets slip the seamy underside of a world view that declares that women not only do not deserve control over their own bodies, they don’t even have the ability to name their own experience. The concept of “legitimate rape,” or “forcible rape,” assumes that women are not really able to name the experience of rape, that there are kinds of rape that somehow don’t count, aren’t real rape. As when Republican lawmakers convened a panel made up entirely of men to discuss women’s health care, this attitude declares that men, and only men, have access to the real reality, and that women are not qualified to define the needs and the violations of their own lives, their own bodies.
My religion affirms “the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” To write into law the notion that women not only don’t have the right to control their own bodies but, worse yet, don’t have the ability to understand and articulate their own experience, is, in fact, an outrage, and an offense against my core beliefs. It isn’t just a gaffe, it’s a world view, a world view that conservatives have built into the party platform. So this time, yes, I am outraged.
Like many of you, I am already bemoaning the tone and tenor of the Presidential campaign. I’m not surprised, mind you, nor are you, I’m sure. While we might have hoped that the candidates and their surrogates would “take the high road” and focus on issues in substantive ways, this fall promises to be the meanest, nastiest, most vitriolic campaign in our nation’s history. I am sick of it already, and it’s not even Labor Day, the traditional “kick-off” date for the campaigns.
To make matters worse, I find many of my friends, both real and “virtual,” pouring gasoline on the flames of division and divisiveness. No sooner are words out of the mouths of the candidates (or some talking head supporting one or the other of them) and – BAM! – social media is riddled with outrage. My friends (who tend to be left-leaning) are quick to both create and forward postings about the latest affront or indignity uttered by their conservative counterparts, often without taking the time to step away from the keyboard, much less to check the facts.
Why, I wonder, do people who ordinarily behave in compassionate ways, support and perpetuate the vitriol that we’re so quick to bemoan? Is it just too easy to pass along a degrading comment about a political opponent with the push of a button? Are we trying to come across as “hip” or clever to our friends, most of whom are already aligned with our position already? We’re certainly not seeking to lift the political discourse out of the gutter that it’s in. Many of us wouldn’t dream of uttering in public many of the accusations we hurl online, yet we hit the “like” or “share” button with reckless abandon. And that makes us participants in, and part of, the problem
As people of faith (no matter what faith you subscribe to), we are called to seek out the best in ourselves and in others. That doesn’t just apply to our flesh and blood selves, but to our online identities as well. In our lives we stand in solidarity against schoolyard bullying. We march for human rights and the doctrine of inclusion. Some of us proclaim loudly and proudly that we “Stand on the Side of Love.” Yet behind the protection of our keyboards and our computers we don’t think twice about “othering” and even demonizing those who don’t share our political viewpoint or who see the solutions to our problems differently than we do.
Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against moral outrage and indignation. We need to voice, both loudly and clearly, our concerns and our solutions. We should advocate for our positions and our candidates. But when we mock, degrade and vilify those who think differently than we do, we debase not just them, but ourselves and the very democracy that we all so dearly treasure.
As we become inevitably immersed in this mean season, I invite you to join me in striving to live up to the principles of our faith, of your faith (whatever it is), no matter how hard that might be. In the language of Unitarian Universalism, let’s ask ourselves how might we continue to “affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity” of our political opponents? How might we remember to strengthen, rather than degrade, the strands of the interdependent web of which we’re all a part? Let’s consider how we might, in the words of Jesus, love not just our friends, but our “enemies” as well? Perhaps it begins by simply taking a breath before we hit “share” or “like” on our Facebook page. May that be our spiritual practice in the weeks and months ahead.
This day, and every day, I wish you peace.
Peter
I’ve become curious about the way that Romney and those in support of his campaign have been accusing Obama of “hatred” and “division.” Is it just a throw it out and see what sticks tactic to assault his character, or is there something deeper going on?
Here’s my best guess. Obama, both by policy and by the mere fact of his existence, violates the world-view of the most privileged. Because white people have traditionally held the vast majority of the power in this country, we are raised with an assumption that white people in power is “normal.” A Black man in the Oval Office violates that deep-rooted sense of “how things are.” It’s “divisive” in the sense that it puts a wedge between the more rational side of the white psyche that articulates that of course we don’t have an issue with Black people and the gut-level sense that things we have always been able to count on are shifting, and so the world is somehow threatening or unsafe.
Similarly, Obama’s stand in favor of gay marriage is “divisive” in that it forces those opposed to same-sex marriage to acknowledge that their point of view is not necessarily “normal,” that the heteronormative society in which we were all raised might not be the society in which our children come of age. Same-sex marriage is in fact a threat to society as we know it—in the sense that it demands of us the flexibility to embrace a society that is slightly different than what we had assumed it to be.
Of course, if you are Black or gay then you have no choice whether to grapple with that division. You can either decide that you are “not normal” or you can decide that society needs to change to make a place for you at the table. But if you have gone through your whole life assuming that the people who are already at the table are the ones who deserve to be there, then a President who wants to bring up some more chairs to let others in is crashing the party.
If you are extremely wealthy and someone says that you aren’t contributing your fair share to society, it’s easier to believe that the person issuing that call is filled with jealousy and hatred than to deeply examine what you owe to the common good, or what compassion and justice demands of each of us.
Which is why I’m talking here about religion and not just politics. Because, really, it is the job of religion to call us beyond our assumptions, beyond our privileges, beyond our narrow worlds to something far bolder. Because it is the job of religion to divide us from our prejudices and sense of entitlement and push us toward the rigorous work of loving our neighbors as ourselves.
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