Invocation in a time of sorrow
Tomorrow morning in the congregation I serve, we will open our worship for all ages with these words:
There are a lot of good and beautiful things in our world.
There are a lot of scary things in our world.
Sometimes we feel great joy and a lot of hope. Sometimes we are brokenhearted and afraid.
We are here in our church this morning because there are a lot of good and beautiful things here. Here, we are surrounded by people that care. Here, we love, and we are loved.
It’s okay to be afraid sometimes. It’s normal to feel pain or anger when something terrible happens. Everybody feels those things sometimes. It’s a part of life.
When those times come, think of places like this. Think of people like the kind people that are here.
We know we don’t have all the answers. Here, we can at least share our questions. And here, we can share a lot more than that: we can share our thoughts and ideas, we can share our pain and our hope. Here, we can remember that we are not alone.
We are here in our church this morning because there are a lot of good and beautiful things here. We’re also here to learn how to bring good and beautiful things into the world.
Drama
For months, we were barraged with a national narrative of a “razor tight” presidential race. (What kind of mixed metaphor is “razor tight” anyway?) But it turned out to be not so close after all. Indeed, some paid attention to voices that were saying all along it would be close, but not so very close, and that the outcome really wasn’t much in doubt. Now a budget deadline is being described as a “fiscal cliff.” Why is so much drama injected into these decisions?
The temptation to ratchet up the emotional intensity of any given situation is real. Perhaps we are motivated by boredom, by a desire to add a sense of passion to situations that would otherwise be marked by torpor and tedium. Perhaps drama makes us feel important, like what we are experiencing is special and powerful. These things speak to essential human needs. We need to feel engaged and interested in life. We need to feel like what we are experiencing and doing matters. These needs are not good or bad; what we do with them, though, can lead us toward nobility, beauty and decency, or down the road to aggression, confusion and chaos.
There are other motives for stirring up drama too. In the case of this most recent contest for the Oval Office, we were faced with a fairly humdrum set of choices. There was precious little talk and debate about climate change, poverty, or the fact that the United States has now been at war longer than at any other time in our history (even in Viet Nam, U.S. combat operations didn’t begin until 1965, ten years before the Paris peace accords), and hardly any discussion about the multiple deployments our armed forces have had to endure or the crisis in mental health that so many of our war veterans face. Talk of middle class tax cuts and natural gas reserves isn’t unimportant, but a deliberate avoidance of other pressing issues necessitates a collective emotional shutting-down. What to fill that void with? “The race is neck-and-neck!”
This is a spiritual issue. What we choose to give our attention to matters. What we choose to think about matters. Do we devote ourselves to ideas and feelings that lead to patience, rationality, open-mindedness, and generosity? Or do we focus on thoughts and emotions that point toward rage, self-righteousness, hysteria and parsimony? What kinds of choices are we demanding that our leaders make? And what choices do we ourselves make?
Follow Rev. Keely on Twitter @evanvwk.
Democracy and faith
Religious faith consists of our most deeply held values. It is the summation of what is of greatest importance to us, our ultimate commitments. But those commitments are expressed in many different ways, through many different aspects of our lives; they have to be if those commitments really are ultimate commitments. So of course, our faith expresses itself in what we say, in the work that we do, in the things we like and dislike, and our faith absolutely finds its expression in the way we vote, in the causes we support and in the causes we oppose, and our faith absolutely finds its expression in how we feel about our political leaders. So to pretend that politics somehow isn’t relevant to religious life shows, I think, a very limited understanding of both religion and politics. Figuring out where religious liberalism ends and where political liberalism begins is a challenge for us, not because we’re shallow or confused or unwise, but because the line between political convictions and religious beliefs is actually very fine. Our beliefs, our convictions, our identities, our lives are not so easily compartmentalized. We do not cease to be religious when we step into the voting booth, and we don’t stop being political when we come to church. That’s as it should be. How we balance those things, as well as all the other things demanding our attention and provoking our interest — well, that’s the hard part.
Unitarian Universalists are a people of faith that celebrate the creative power of difference respectfully encountered, the redemptive and healing power of different people being truly themselves and sharing of those true selves with others. Yet we know that we cannot and should not expect to accept everything. We should never make a place in our religious homes for abusive and destructive behavior; we can’t be truly ourselves unless we trust one another, and that means we must impose appropriate, healthy boundaries. And of course, no one religious community is going to feel like home to every single person who visits. Some will walk among us briefly and move on in search of something else. But if we actively exclude anyone, we had better make sure we understand how doing so is an expression of who we yearn to be as a religious people. The idea that if we are going to worship together and pray together and be together as a religious community, we must therefore also vote in the same way shows a very limited understanding of what it means for us to be in community. This is not because our political views are unimportant, or irrelevant to religious life; they are important, and they are relevant. It’s because the foundation of our faith lies in the creative possibilities of being transformed and liberated and healed by constructively encountering difference. If we insist upon unanimity, and explicitly or tacitly exclude anyone who falls outside the self-appointed majority, it can only be because we have very little confidence in the religious faith that supposedly binds us together.
Politics is not often conducive to reconciliation, respect, and mutual understanding. We get the message again and again, loud and clear, that there is no middle ground. On any issue at any given time, there are winners and there are losers. You’re for capital punishment or you’re against it. You’re pro-choice or you’re pro-life. Your state is red or it’s blue. Well, we know that the reality is far more complex. And we know that democracy is messy and inefficient and imperfect; it’s an unending series of processes, and we’d just better learn to live with it, because Winston Churchill was quite right when he supposedly quipped that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.” As a religious people committed to love and forgiveness and reconciliation, committed to mutual understanding and respect and being enriched rather than threatened by difference, and yes, as a religious people committed to democracy, the question for us is how we are to participate authentically in the often divisive processes of democracy while still maintaining our religious commitments.
We have a vision for our nation and our world. It is a vision of a world in which different people can come together and learn from one another rather than fearing and hating each other. Our religion calls us to practice that among ourselves, and to bring that healing, saving message to the world. We can only do so if we encounter our own differences with respect and honesty and love.
Love Is the Spirit of This Church
“Love is the spirit of this church, and service is its law.” So begins a well-beloved passage adapted from the words of the Rev. James Vila Blake, a Unitarian Universalist minister in Evanston, Illinois. These words are often spoken in the life of our faith. Several of the congregations I’ve served spoke them communally every week as part of their worship.
When we say certain words or phrases over and over again, there are several possible effects. One is that our brains tune out the repeated stimulus. I suspect most schoolchildren have this kind of relationship with the Pledge of Allegiance. But another effect of saying things repeatedly is that they become deeply engrained into who we are. Are the words of this statement engraved into the souls of those who speak them?
“Love is the spirit of this church.” This is a powerful statement. If it is true, and we all hope that on some level it is true, it obliges us not only to walk together in love, but to think deeply about what it means for us to love.
Too many churches embrace the fallacy that caring and inclusion mean the absence of conflict. This is a horribly destructive falsehood, because it stifles the creative and transformative confrontation of conflict. Caring and inclusion mean that conflict is addressed in a caring and inclusive way. An environment in which the tacit agreement is that we will avoid saying or doing anything somebody might disagree with is not one of caring and inclusion. If we assert, explicitly or implicitly, that controversy is not welcome, that disagreement is against the rules, what we are really saying is that we don’t actually trust each other. Dissent and disagreement, when they are expressed respectfully, are an expression of trust. We are saying to that other person: I trust you; I trust that you will take these remarks in the spirit of good will in which they were intended; I trust that you will engage in this dialogue with me in a respectful and thoughtful way.
Most churches aren’t real enthusiastic about dealing with conflict, and frankly, while it’s not healthy to be conflict-avoidant, some folks make a fetish of conflict — they relish fussin’ ’n’ fightin’ so much that that’s the only way they know how to be in relationship with others. It’s not impossible to find Unitarian Universalist congregations that fit that bill, though of course it ain’t just us. Every human group has its conflicts, whether it’s a family or a factory workforce or a town council or a church. Crises are a part of the nature of things, and crises create conflict. Such conflict can be addressed in any number of ways, but where there is a crisis, there will be a conflict. Stasis is not the nature of the universe; things change, things move, and predicaments arise, and with them, conflicts. Conflict is a part of life. The question is not whether or not we have to deal with conflicts, but how we respond to them, and how we may respond to the inevitable conflicts of the future.
“Love is the spirit of this church” means that we are going to disagree, and that we stay at the table even when the going gets tough. “Love is the spirit of this church” means that we are going to trust one another with our differences of opinion. “Love is the spirit of this church” means that we are going to be honest with one another and with ourselves — even when doing so is uncomfortable, especially when doing so is uncomfortable. It’s important to understand the thorny and complex meanings of “love is the spirit of this church,” but just as important is understanding what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that we place stability and appeasement and familiarity over courage and honesty and a sense of adventure. It doesn’t mean that we think our interpersonal connections are so fragile that anything that could disrupt their perceived stasis needs to be avoided, especially since that perception of stasis is itself an illusion. Relationships are alive, and all living things grow and change. “Love is the spirit of this church” means that we as a faith community have to have the courage to grow and change together. And it does take courage, it does take courage to do that.
Endurance
“The manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured.”
Dean Acheson (attrib.)
We are accustomed to regard a person’s circumstances when we consider his or her level of suffering. Certainly certain conditions are more conducive to despair than others. Inmates in a concentration camp, survivors of a cataclysmic tsunami or a person trapped in a horribly abusive relationship can hardly be blamed for succumbing to hopelessness and nihilism. However, the reality is that regardless of circumstances, there are three things that can make human life unbearable:
A sense of aloneness. James Joyce noted, “It relieves us to see or hear our own distress expressed by another person.” The sense that someone else understands what we are experiencing can be enormously encouraging and liberating for us. Conversely, the feeling that no one understands what we’re going through, that no one cares, that no one will help us, is universally regarded as one of the most horrible and terrifying experiences a person can endure. Our species is hard-wired to seek support and caring from others.
A sense of meaninglessness. We need to feel that our lives matter, that our personal energies and abilities are dedicated toward something that has a constructive purpose. We also are constantly seeking to understand our suffering in some context that will give it meaning. It never surprises me that so many people believe that a benevolent deity is responsible for their pain; it gives many comfort to think that their otherwise meaningless anguish is part of a benign cosmic purpose, however mysterious or incomprehensible to us it may be.
A sense of hopelessness. When my wife and I were expecting our first child, we met an obstetric nurse who remarked, “One of the things that makes pain bearable is knowing when it is going to end.” (This may be a good thing to contemplate during contractions.) The feeling that things will never get better, that misery is the permanent state of the universe, is not endurable to the human psyche. People who struggle with suicidality often report these kinds of feelings.
We are religious for many reasons; among these is our need to overcome these three horrors. We come together in religious communities so that we may escape the sense of aloneness, and that we might help others to know they are not alone. We come together in religious communities to make meaning out of life, even life’s most dreadful miseries. We come together in religious communities to find hope, and to try to give others hope.
May God give us the wisdom and the strength to seek others, to find meaning, and to live in hope. May God guide us that we may help others to know that they are not alone, for we are with them; that life has meaning, because we love; and that there is hope for all of us.
The Noblest Deed
One hundred and fifty years ago today, President Lincoln issued a Preliminary Proclamation that mandated the emancipation of all slaves in Confederate territory that did not return to the Union by January 1 of the following year. It was the beginning of the end of one of the greatest blots upon the face of liberty, a chattel system of coerced servitude in a nation founded upon ideals of equality and freedom.
“President Lincoln Reading the Emancipation Proclamation to His Cabinet” by Francis Bicknell Carpenter
Lincoln was many things, but let us never forget that he was a politician. He had to assuage the concerns of various constituencies, he had to build alliances, he had to pursue his advantage when necessary and compromise when it was called for. Yet ultimately, the greatness of Lincoln’s leadership lay in his insistence upon doing what he knew to be right, his steadfastness in pursuing that right, and the deftness with which he pursued the right.
The road to true freedom is a long one. Look at how Russia, South Africa, Haiti, Myanmar, and so many other nations have ambled, not always sure-footedly, away from tyranny and slowly, slowly in the direction of embracing human dignity. The setbacks are many, and the outcome far from certain. Our own country has made great strides, but we know there is still much for us to do. Slavery as it was once known in this country is no more, yet its legacy still haunts us. Poverty still cripples dreams in this land of wealth. Injustices still abound among us. There are brief moments in the history of any people when a creative genius like Lincoln steps in and enacts fundamental change. Yet we cannot wait for the strong arm of one person to right our wrongs for us. Each of us needs to cultivate that blend of heroic idealism and cunning pragmatism that made Lincoln our country’s greatest president.
Motivations
In religion as well as in politics (and probably in innumerable other realms of human endeavor as well), any seeker after truth and meaning can be bombarded with an incomprehensibly vast heap of supposed facts and truths. It is very easy to encounter a multiplicity of voices which appear to assert, with the utmost confidence, something to the effect of, “I have the truth, the real truth. Anyone who disagrees with me is completely misguided and mistaken.” Certainly political discourse in the United States doesn’t appear to invite much exploration of nuances and complexities. It’s not that difficult for religious exploration to meander down a similar path.
Why do we make the commitments we make, whether it’s about politics, religion, or anything else? What motivates us toward one thing and away from another? We are often driven less by facts and more by feelings. We can ask the same question about relationships. My wife and I will soon be celebrating our twelfth wedding anniversary. I could easily provide a long list of very sound reasons why I love her so much and why being with her all these years has been a source of immense happiness for me. Yet my decision join my life with hers, and to renew that commitment again and again, day by day, is not based on empirical, double-blind, peer-reviewed evidence. I did not engage in elaborate scientific investigations in order to determine that she would make a good spouse for me. I just felt it, and still feel it. There isn’t anything wrong with this — indeed, the prospect of a scientific study in order to determine the suitability of a particular person to be a life-partner would be absurd to most of us. What’s important is that we acknowledge the role of passions and deep fears, preconceived notions and unquestioned assumptions in all the decisions we make. It’s also wise to consider when those deep feelings may not be the best motivators. Many more people than most of us would care to think about (and that very often includes ourselves) make political decisions not based on carefully considered data, but on how they feel. A political candidate’s personal likability is a very significant factor in most elections. If pressed to consider it honestly, most of us would admit that the qualities we would seek in an ideal dinner companion are not necessarily the same as those characteristics we’d want in an effective civic leader. Yet frequently we make decisions on criteria we neither consciously recognize nor would really be altogether comfortable with if we did.
In religious life also, there is this dichotomy of the cerebral and the visceral. Many of us could give very cogent, persuasive reasons why we have made the religious commitments and embraced the faith convictions that we have. Yet there is also the element of the non-rational in these things. This is not inherently good or bad; where we must be careful is in acknowledging this truth of our humanity.
Legitimacy
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.
In solidarity with our Sikh sisters and brothers
This past Sunday’s horrific shooting at the Oak Creek Sikh Temple just outside Milwaukee is more than just news headlines to Unitarian Universalists. It took place just a week after the four-year anniversary of an unnervingly similar crime, the killing of two and wounding of seven on July 27, 2008 at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church by a lone gunman whose perception of reality was warped by hate.
There is much we may never know about Wade Michael Page, the apparent gunman in the Oak Creek shootings, as he was among the dead in the violence he unleashed (apparently by his own hand after being wounded in a shootout with police). Why did he do what he did? Why did he choose that site for this awful deed? We do know that Page apparently participated for years in the so-called “hatecore” music scene, playing in a band called End Apathy that spouted a violent white-supremacist message. Like Adkisson, he imbibed a fearful message of suspicion and denigration of others; like Adkisson, Page’s life appeared to be spiraling into a frightening maelstrom of frustration, discouragement, and despair — none of which justifies their dreadful acts, of course, but once again we see a life unraveling into monstrous violence. Could any compassionate intervention have saved these deeply troubled men from themselves? We will probably never know, yet the question haunts.
Sikhism, not well known in the United States, in many ways embodies a polar opposite of the evil rage that assaulted our sisters and brothers in Oak Creek: it teaches compassion, the equality of women and men and indeed of all people, and emphasizes social justice and activism. Perhaps those of us who embrace Unitarian Universalism should reach out to the Sikh community not only with compassion for what they have endured, but because we might find ourselves allies with common goals.
It’s trite to point out how so many of the world’s religions point toward the universality of love and compassion; equally tiresome are the clichés about how religion divides us and creates enmity, from the Crusades of old to the conflicts of modern times: partition in south Asia following Indian independence, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Northern Ireland, et cetera, et al., ad nauseam. These observations are overused because they both contain truths, and they are wearisome because neither of these simplistic sets of perspectives really helps us identify the ways in which we can be authentically religious and also lead constructive lives dedicated to progress, fairness and decency. Likewise, though our love of justice demands that we condemn these deranged acts of violence, that is never enough. Indeed, everything feels inadequate in response to something like the horrors that unfolded at Oak Creek and Knoxville.
So what can we do?
We can form and sustain alliances with other religious peoples and work together toward common constructive goals.
If we know an individual whose life appears to be plummeting toward destruction and self-destruction, we can try to offer support and point him or her toward help.
In a world full of suspicion, meanness and violence, we can try to live each day with compassion, patience, knowledge and open-mindedness.
No, it won’t bring back those who died in Oak Creek or Knoxville, or anywhere else that hate has left its deadly mark. But it is something.
Context and interpretation
In matters of interpretation, it’s important for us to try to understand context. This is an essential assumption inherent in a liberal religious outlook. Religious liberalism tends to discourage an enthusiasm for absolutes and universals, embracing instead a sense that the milieu in which something comes into being is almost always relevant in some way. This is intrinsic to a liberal religious interpretation of scripture, for instance.
It should be admitted that we all take things out of context sometimes. We all “pick and choose” to some degree, whether we’re liberal, conservative, or whatever label (meaningful or not) we may assign to a particular person or school of thought. Nevertheless, it’s healthy to acknowledge, if we can, when and why this picking and choosing take place.
Evidence indicates that James E. Holmes, the young man accused in the horrible recent mass shooting in a Colorado cinema, purchased some 6,000 rounds of ammunition quite legally over the internet prior to the massacre, and there are so far no indications that the four firearms he is accused of using in the shooting were obtained unlawfully. This brings to light yet again the ongoing and complex issue in our society about the availability of firearms, and the government’s role in regulating their sale and purchase. The defense mounted by those who urge fewer restrictions on gun ownership is most often the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which is interpreted in those instances as protecting the right to bear arms. After all, it’s right there in the text. But what does the amendment actually say?
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
There is an aspect of this amendment which is wholly unique, both within the original Bill of Rights and the seventeen other amendments that have been added subsequently: the Second Amendment is the only one that says why the right in question is granted. The First Amendment does not state, “The separation of church and state being vital to the sustenance of a democratic state, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” the Thirteenth Amendment does not say, “Being injurious to and wholly at odds with the principles of liberty, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” Indeed, every other amendment simply states what the rights being granted or the restrictions on the government are, without stating a purpose for doing so. Only the Second Amendment gives a rationale, an explanation for why the right it grants shall not be infringed.
To what militia did James E. Holmes belong, and by whom was that militia well-regulated?
If a phrase from the Constitution, the Bible, or any text is going to be taken out of context, we ought to think seriously about why, and what the consequences might be.
