The Heart of Democracy
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Do you trust democracy? In your bones, do you trust it? Do you trust yourself and your fellow citizens?
Have you ever feared the democratic outcome?
Rhetoric is high and relentless these days. While we like to claim our openness to difference, I sense there are times we feign deep listening. Or maybe it’s just me. As the posturing and gamesmanship barrages our senses, we retreat to our corners, sure in our truth. Or we may even retreat to our well-honed middle position.
We duck as the messiness of ideas fly back and forth. “They” are not listening and are not going to listen. It feels tough to engage—there is a hopelessness in the political climate of today.
Religion on its own, or politics on its own, is each fraught with triggers. Mixing the two is dicey, and yet the spheres aren’t separate.
Our 5th UU principle directly states that UU congregations will affirm and promote “the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.” Right there—we view the democratic process as a principle of faith.
It’s not new. When the Unitarians and Universalists merged in 1961 it was stated this way: UU congregations “affirm, defend and promote the supreme worth of every human personality, the dignity of man, and the use of the democratic method in human relationships.”
Lifting up “democracy” as one of our religious principles goes back even further. In the 1940s, Rev. A. Powell Davies, minister at the All Souls Church, Unitarian in Washington, DC, had the democratic method identified as a nationwide core value of the faith.
Davies was born in England at the turn of the century, and in England was trained as a Methodist minister. He came to the US in 1928 and was a persistent public advocate for civil liberties, government accountability, family planning and desegregation. In time he shifted and in 1933 was fellowshipped as a Unitarian minister.
Consider his context. He was raised during WWI in Europe, lived through the Depression in the US, and was developing these Unitarian values well into WWII. He’d experienced fascism, was part of a world struggling to respond to communism, and he still held his long term social justice concerns.
In the mid-1940s Rev. Davies was appointed to a national committee charged to “advance” the Unitarian faith. The group focused on rejuvenating and growing the Unitarian faith, in large part by clarifying its purpose.
The committee only agreed to five principles, and one was Unitarian faith in “Democratic process in human relations.” It stuck. It is still around.
Recall that Rev. Davies was the spiritual leader of congregations around the DC Beltway, the center of the US government. A decade later, he still was expounding on democracy. In a sermon in 1954 he offered:
“[Unitarianism] is an inclusive, not an exclusive faith, based on individual freedom of belief…finding salvation not through someone else’s martyrdom, but by education and the disciplines of democracy….
A …commitment of the Unitarian faith is to democracy—not merely as a political system but as the just and brotherly way in human relations.…
We think that discussion is the path to true agreement. We are educators one of another, and all can learn from each.
We are well aware that democracy can be a discipline—sometimes a harsh one. But this is part of its value. We grow by learning to get along with other people. We grow even more when we learn to respect and like each other, to have a concern, each for all, in the words of the New Testament, to “love one another.”
For Rev. Davies, democracy was not only a public institution, but was a moral institution as well.
He worried democracy would be taken for granted. He saw modern democracy needed advocates and protection. It was not a squishy niceness. Davies had seen the alternatives, and put his trust in an engaged democracy. An engaged democracy. Not a vote and move on democracy. He saw the best method of protection was to live into the deep ideals of democracy by working through difference.
And differences we will have. While humans have a propensity to cooperate with one another in social groups for survival and fulfillment, we also have a propensity for violence within and among groups.
I sense our trust in the institution of democracy is slipping.
Our founding documents, adjusted over time, have checks and balances that spell out the processes for self-government. Let’s be real here—the initial set up was for white, male, land-owners to do the deciding and the governing. But slowly these principles have changed. The democracy created was to be deliberate and slow.
This foundation is sturdy, but not a guarantee. Frustrations are high and cynicism festers. Our democracy is not a guarantee. I hear this as Davies’ central point. The imperfect institution needs to be protected, and improved, and this is the mantle we are called to carry.
Modern democracy offers a path toward affirming the inherent worth and dignity of all. It is a moral assumption. It is a moral aspiration.
What are we individually and collectively ready to risk for democracy? To heal democracy?
Democracy is about voting, but it has to be more.
For democracy to work we need to bring our whole selves to the process—head, heart, and energy. We have to be in connection across our differences. Yet, as challenges have mounted, many have pulled back, often living in echo chambers with those who agree with them.
We are called to deeply engage, even knowing that probably means our hearts will break. Will our hearts break open to possibility instead of breaking apart? Parker Palmer, in his book Healing the Heart of Democracy, suggests that if we gain “greater capacity to hold the complexities and contradictions of human experience, the result may be new life.”
Isn’t that what it takes to live in democracy? To authentically participate. To listen, and to speak up. To risk to trust in a democratic system we know as imperfect, but which in its most engaged forms may be our best hope to get through the challenges of human relations.
We’re called as citizens in a democracy to hold life’s many tensions consciously, faithfully, until our hearts are opened. It is in doing so that we sustain and build trust so we may live into the responsibility of governing ourselves.
Sue grew up moving around the country, eventually landing in NJ. She holds a BS in Mathematics from the University of New Hampshire, an MBA from Boston College, and a Masters of Divinity from Wesley Theological Seminary. Prior to seminary, Sue worked for close to 30 years at Verizon and its predecessor ("Baby Bell") companies.
Sue's call to ministry came after years of lay leadership at the UU Church of Arlington. She and her husband Bill discovered Unitarian Universalism when in search for religious education for their children. They were seeking a community that regularly opened conversations on ethics and morals, and they wanted to make time for a spiritual life, especially during this busy time in their lives. She notes, "We needed a routine to slow down, and at times to even fully pause!" In time, Sue got involved in church leadership, where she focused on religious education, membership and social justice. Sue shares, "Eventually I sensed this work of leading and building connections as a call to ministry.”Sue was ordained by the Arlington congregation in 2013. In addition to seminary, her training for ministry included work as a chaplain at Goodwin House (a retirement community) and a full time internship with the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Rockville (Maryland).
Sue and her husband Bill have three adult children and a high strung beagle.
- The Heart of Democracy - March 1, 2020
