“We Are A Welcoming Congregation!”
2434 East Battlefield, Springfield, Missouri 65804-3980
phone: 417-883-3922 fax: 417-883-7680
e-mail: springfield@springfieldunitarians.org
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First Unitarian
Universalist Church “We Are A Welcoming Congregation!” 2434 East Battlefield, Springfield, Missouri 65804-3980 phone: 417-883-3922 fax: 417-883-7680 e-mail: springfield@springfieldunitarians.org |
Happy Fourth of July! I am so glad that those of you on your way to James River Assembly’s “I Love America!” festivities instead chose to make the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Springfield your Independence Day celebration headquarters. I hate to break it to you, but we won’t be having any fireworks today. Nope, not even sparklers or smoke bombs. But I have it on good authority that the Pagan group is having a barbeque after today’s service and I understand that watching Chris Bradley light the grill may not exactly be “the rocket’s red glare”—but it’s close.
We may not be hosting 90,000 conversion units at our church today, but I’ll warrant that our small choir’s version of the “Star Spangled Banner” raised just as many goose-bumps on your arm as James River Assembly’s “Living Flag Chorale” does with their version tomorrow.
Because when push comes to shove, patriotism is not about how much money you can spend on fireworks, it’s not if you can hit the high note in the national anthem or whether you can get Governor Blunt to make a speech at your 4th of July picnic. Patriotism is an ideal; it’s a state of mind, a state of being. Patriotism belongs not to the Republicans, who support smaller government. Patriotism belongs not to the Democrats, who support social justice. Patriotism does not belong to the right wing, who support a return to morals and ethics. And patriotism does not belong to the left wing, who support governmental reform.
So to whom does the title patriot belong? According to my dictionary, it belongs to anyone who “loves, supports and defends one’s country.” One’s country; a very broad term. Not loves and supports the policies of the government of one’s country, or the president of one’s country, or each and every action or law of one’s country. As a matter of fact, we have proven time and time again over the course of history in our country that patriotism can also be loosely defined as dissent against the government or policies or actions or laws of one’s country. That dissent, fully sanctioned by the drafters of the Constitution of the United States of America, was foreseen to be at times necessary for the protection of the true ideals of those who founded our country.
Why else would they have amended the Constitution in 1791 to add, first and foremost, a Bill of Rights which states, in its first amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
According to this definition, someone who burns an American flag in protest, presuming it wasn’t a stolen flag—like the American and gay pride flags which were stolen off our church flag pole this past March—is perfectly within their First Amendment rights. At least they are as of this writing. And someone who protests such a flag burning is within their First Amendment rights as well. As it should be. As long as they don’t turn to violence to get their point across.
Many of you may have been part of Friday evening’s demonstration on National Avenue showing your commitment to a Supreme Court nominee who will protect a women’s right to choice in her reproductive health. You may also have signed petitions urging your members of Congress to vote one way or another. This is your right, as it is also the right of those who choose to demonstrate against a woman’s right to choose.
This is what we Americans call our “Marketplace of Ideas.” According to an article in Wikipedia, an online collaborative encyclopedia, this rationale for freedom of expression is based on an analogy of communication to goods in the economic marketplace. This theory holds that the truth arises out of the competition of ideas in an open market. The operative word here, of course, is open.
This rationale is articulated in U.S. Supreme Court case law in the 1919 case Abrams v. the United States. The dissenting opinion here written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and joined by Justice Louis Brandeis is, according to the U.S. State Department, “widely recognized as the starting point in modern judicial concern for free expression.”
Holmes explains in this famous dissent: “Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power and want a certain result with all your heart you naturally express your wishes in law and sweep away all opposition.... But, when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas—that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution.”
These ideals, of course, are not foreign to Unitarian Universalists. It is not a fluke that many of the ideals which our religion holds high are also the ideals which our nation holds high. We know, of course, that many of the nation’s founders were Unitarians. Thomas Jefferson, though he never officially joined a Unitarian Church, confidently predicted that the free-spirited religious movement known as “Unitarianism” would “ere long become the general religion of the land from North to South,” and that there was not a young man then alive “who would not die a Unitarian.”
Alas, this “Second American Revolution” predicted by another early patriot, Thomas Paine, never came to pass: “I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion,” he said.
There is a big difference between what we Unitarians define as America’s seminal patriots and today’s patriots. Just who are today’s patriots? In 1952, Adlai Stevenson asked this of the American Legion Convention: “What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility . . . a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.”
Strong words. Bold and true. I wish that we could write them on our hearts in letters as impermeable as those that spell out the epitaphs on the tombs of soldiers that have died in all the conflicts undertaken in the name of patriotism in the past 53 years.
And I wish that those who honor all those who have fallen under the red, white and blue banner of American patriotism could see that there are thousands of others who have given their lives for other brands of patriotism, not so readily honored.
They go by the names of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner, three young men who were murdered for registering blacks to vote in Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1964. They go by the names of Alison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder; those who are forever known as the “4 dead in Ohio” from the May 4, 1970 shootings at Kent State. They are known as Dr. Barnett Slepian, an abortion provider who was gunned down in Amherst, New York, in 1998, or Matthew Shepard, who was beaten to death in 1998 for being gay.
Tough times make tough people. Which is why we bred so many patriots during the Revolutionary War, and the Cold War and the fight for Civil Rights, and the Vietnam War, and during every other fight worth fighting. So says Chinese philosopher Lao-Tsu in the Tao-te-ching: “When a nation is filled with strife, then do patriots flourish.”
These days it seems as if some want the measuring stick for the title “patriot” to only come in one color: blue or red; depending upon who is in office. But you know how it is with Americans: We like to back a winning team. As the British historian Eric Hobsbawn said in 1988: “It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they’re not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans.”
Ach, things are so complicated when you look at the big picture. It should be much simpler to shrink this patriotism thing down to a microcosm, to look at it in terms that we can better understand. Since many of our American forebears were Unitarian and we are Unitarian Universalists, why don’t we try focusing the ideal of patriotism onto our own congregation? Let’s see how this ideal is borne out by our own Fifth Principle: As members of the Unitarian Universalist Association we affirm and promote the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.
OK, so it doesn’t really talk about patriotism, but it does talk about the democratic process. Which is as American as mom, baseball, apple pie and Chevrolets (unless, of course, you happen to drive a Toyota Prius hybrid which is—two snaps and a thumbs up—very patriotic!)
And the democratic process works right into the First Amendment, which while we don’t have an amendment to our particular church bylaws, we do believe in and support the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And though it’s not printed anywhere, I’m betting you can put us down as agreeing with our founding forebears as saying: “[The 1st UU Church] shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the [Board of Trustees] for a redress of grievances.”
Knock-down, drag-out fights have been fought over the First Amendment to the American Constitution. What can these same words mean when applied to a church?
As far as I’m concerned, they mean:
1. Make no law respecting an establishment of religion. The 1st UU Church isn’t going to declare that we are a humanist church, or a deist church, or a pagan church, or an atheist church, or an agnostic church, or a left-handed-Vegan-born-under-the-sign-of-Aquarius church. Unitarian Universalist is as vague or as specific as it is going to get. If you want more than that, we can hand you a thesaurus and a local copy of the church listings. (Really, we’re that helpful: we’ll help you find the right church home for you, if we know how to identify it.)
2. Prohibiting the free exercise thereof. If you want to form a Covenant Group, or Special Interest Group, or other Small Group Ministries, just see the Board of Trustees. We’ve got it all, from Book Group to Yoga, with just about everything in between. Just take a look at the back of your order of service.
3. Abridging the freedom of speech. Board meetings are always open to anyone. You can get up and speak on any topic in front of the members at a congregational meeting during the open forum. There is always open debate on matters to be voted on. We have Soap Box Sunday in August, for anyone who has a bone to pick about any subject.
4. Or of the press. You can always send in a question to the newsletter, to the new column called “Ask Emerson.” Believe you me, as editor and chief space filler of the monthly newsletter, I’d be more than happy to print whatever articles you send in.
5. Or the right of the people peaceably to assemble. See number 2 above. We’ve got space for special interest and covenant groups to assemble, as well as space for outside groups.
6. To petition the [Board of Trustees] for a redress of grievances. See number 3 above. Not only are Board meetings always open to anyone, board positions are always open to anyone. Don’t for one moment think that there is one whit of difference between those who wear the blue name tags and those who wear the white. It is not “us” vs. “them,” no matter how it may look at an annual meeting, when the Board is sitting up in the choir chairs, facing the rest of the members.
We are all in this together, folks. The only thing I can be 100% certain about is that is that over time, the makeup of the “we” is going to change and the situation that defines “this” is going to change. The “we” that is in this room today isn’t the same “we” who was here five years ago, and won’t necessarily be the same “we” who will be here five years from now. And of course there will be an ever rotating list of situations that define “this”: bylaws changes, hiring a minister, firing a minister, etc.
The only thing that remains constant is the “together” part. That is the democratic process that we use to govern ourselves and the right of conscience that is our guide during the process. It’s so simple, yet so elegant. A process that works equally well whether you are on the left or on the right. Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican, a Libertarian, a Green, a Pink or a Whatever. It works whether you are a Christian or a Humanist or a Pagan or an Atheist or a left-handed-Vegan-born-under-the-sign-of-Aquarius.
However...it doesn’t work if nobody shows up.
Last update:
02 July 2005
© First Unitarian Universalist Church of Springfield, MO
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