Politics and Religion

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One hundred years ago the state of Maine was sharply divided between Republicans and Democrats. The little lakeside town of Naples suffered animosity so severe that the village had two stores, two libraries, and even two schoolteachers, a Republican and a Democrat. Unfortunately, they only had one schoolhouse. The Democrats and Republicans took turns locking one another out. In the middle of this political turmoil, a reporter asked a five-year-old boy whether he and his family were Republicans or Democrats. Thinking hard, the little boy scratched his head and said, “I think we’re Baptists.”

Politics and religion.

In the South about twenty years ago, a group began growing in power and influence within local conservative churches. The movement soon spread to other parts of the country. They published voting guides, and surreptitiously (and sometimes not so surreptitiously) supported candidates, until ultimately the Christian Coalition was told by the Internal Revenue Service that if they did not curtail their political activities, they risked losing their tax-exempt status. That status was indeed taken away in 1999, and with it went several local congregations. Meanwhile, hundreds of other churches have been left in tatters, irreconcilably divided between those who wished to pursue partisan agendas and those who decried the loss of the spiritual core of the faith. The little-known side effect of the infusion of politics into their religion was schism and grief.

Politics and religion.

One hundred seventy years ago, a Unitarian clergyman named Theodore Parker developed a vision of American democracy, one with no remaining elements of aristocracy, monarchy, or that scourge he saw as the largest obstacle to the human spirit, slavery. He criticized the Mexican War from the pulpit, and at great personal risk preached openly his resistance to any form of government that fell short of “direct self-government, over all the people, by all the people, for all the people,” a phrase that would later be adapted by President Abraham Lincoln.

Politics and religion.

Only five or six decades ago, Unitarian and Universalist churches struggled with the issue of civil rights. Many who resisted change did so not because of open bigotry, but simply because the change itself was uncomfortable. It was too much to keep hearing about integration and racial justice. They wanted a feeling of comfort and refuge from church; they didn’t want to be challenged. Others felt the challenge should go further than it ever did. We owe part of who we are as a religion and as a society today to those courageous Unitarians and Universalists who decided that sometimes justice takes precedence. Some, like Rev. James Reeb, lost their lives for what they believed.

Politics and religion.

Politics and religion—these are the two proscribed dinner table conversations, the topics to be avoided at all costs. Like it or not, though, you can’t ignore politics, or separate political views completely from religious views. We live in a political age, no less so than Theodore Parker or James Reeb or Susan B. Anthony, or anyone else. Our lives are infused with politics, and to ignore that fact is to waive the responsibility our faith calls us to.