Reading
From Soul of a Citizen, by Paul Loeb

[T]he issues we now face [in our nation] are complex - perhaps more so than in the past….[It is a daunting task to understand them fully, much less deal with them]. Yet what leaves too many of us sitting on the sidelines is not only a lack of understanding of the complexities of our world. It's not only an absence of readily apparent ways to begin or resume public involvement. Certainly we need to decide for ourselves whether particular causes are wise or foolish….We need to identify and connect with worthy groups that take on these issues, whether locally or globally. But first we need to believe that our individual involvement is worthwhile, that what we might do in the public sphere will not be in vain….

America's prevailing culture of cynicism [too often] insists that nothing we do can matter…It encourages us to leave the important decisions to others…Sadly, and ironically, in a country born of a democratic political revolution, to be American today is to be apolitical. Civic withdrawal has become our norm. To challenge this requires courage. It also requires creating a renewed definition of ourselves as citizens….

The importance of citizens' direct participation in a democracy was expressed thousands of years ago, by the ancient Greeks. In fact, they used the word "idiot" for people incapable of involving themselves in civic life. Now, the very word "political" has become so debased in our culture that we use it to describe either trivial office power plays or the inherently corrupt world of elected leaders.

We've lost sight of its original roots in the Greek notion of the polis: the democratic sphere in which citizens, acting in concert, determine the character and direction of their society.

To Be a Citizen
by Rev. Kathleen McTigue, October 24, 2004

Last weekend I was away, taking advantage of an unexpected opportunity for a silent meditation retreat at the Insight Meditation Center in Barre, Massachusetts. Silent meditation isn't for everyone, and even for those of us who choose it as our spiritual discipline there are lots of times when our heads are so frantically buzzing with thoughts and busyness that real silence seems completely impossible. But on this short retreat of mine I was joining fifty or sixty people who are in the midst of a really long retreat - three months long -- so the sitting itself was exceptionally quiet and restful.

But I only realized on my return back home to regular life that one of the reasons it was so deeply restful and renewing for me was that it had removed me briefly from the background frenzy of the presidential campaign. For those couple of days I had seen no newspaper, heard no radio or television news or ads, and had kept track of no polls. And as willing as I was to resume most of the dimensions of family and work life on Monday, I found that that was one piece I really didn't want to re-enter. I wanted to stay in the cocoon of silence and withdrawal that I had on retreat. And in small ways I'm holding on to that quieter frame of mind - trying, at the very least, to avoid political ads and the emotional roller-coaster offered by the daily poll results.

But cocoons are not generally helpful for those of us who aspire to be real citizens, which I assume includes most of us here in this room. As a general group, Unitarian Universalists tend to be people of high engagement in their communities. That choice is born of a conviction that sometimes seems quaint or naïve which but we hold onto it anyway: that it is our responsibility as citizens to be involved.

We might be foolish sometimes, but we are not "idiots" in the classic Greek sense mentioned in our reading this morning, as a term for someone who can't participate in civic life. In even the most boring elections, we vote. When things get more interesting, like they have this year, a lot of us will carve the time out of our busy lives to do more. We will help raise money, walk a precinct or two, get involved in voter registration or turn-out-the-vote drives, even travel to neighboring states where the tightness of the race means our efforts will weigh a little more.

But even in a crowd like this one, it seems worthwhile to ask this most basic of questions: What does it mean to be a citizen? What does it mean to be a citizen today, in this particular imperfect democracy, caught up as we are in the tension of a heated campaign that might well lead to an immensely bitter election?

There is a long tradition within the United States of election sermons, despite the much-vaunted separation of church and state. For centuries, ministers and priests have used the pulpit to thoroughly blur that noble but artificial line. All through October of this year there have been and will still be sermons, increasing in their passion and pitch, preached to congregations of every stripe, warning them or urging them in veiled or explicit ways to vote for one candidate over the other. I'm pretty sure that most of theses election sermons are a waste of everybody's time and attention. That's because in most congregations, from the most conservative to the most liberal, parishioners and their spiritual leaders tend to know each other's convictions already. No one is going to be surprised - much less edified - to hear why their minister is voting for George Bush, or for John Kerry; and however much heat and froth are poured into the sermons, they aren't likely to make much difference in how anyone in the pews will vote.

But there's another kind of election sermon than the partisan one, and it revolves around the simple fact that after this election is over, we will all still be living together. We are citizens of the same nation whatever political party we choose, and our lives mostly go on at the local level, where we connect with each other at the PTA or the grocery store or the town hall. We're supposed to pick up the thread of that common life whether or not the guy we vote for is the one who ends up governing the land.

This has always been true: when the dust settles after an election, the people get back to business just like they do after even the most passionate baseball season is over. Whether your team wins or loses, you go back to work and to life, often side by side with someone who cheered themselves hoarse for the opposing team.

Only that's not what it feels like this time around. This time around, we're voting after four years of a presidency that was disputed from the beginning, and one that has leaned toward the far conservative right on nearly every issue of importance. Both sides are pouring thousands of poll watchers into swing states, and muttering darkly about their adversaries 'stealing' the election.

This time around, the election falls in the context of enormous insecurity, in the midst of a war that leaves most Americans at least uneasy, in the midst of an economy that feels shaky and uncertain. This time around, there is a feeling of deep intensity. I can't remember how many times I've heard or read words like, "this is the most important election of my lifetime", or "there is more at stake in this election than has been the case for generations". Among the newest, youngest voters, the key slogan is simply, "Vote or die".

As extreme as some of these statements sound to us, they are becoming pervasive, and they all speak to the truth that we're living in a context of extraordinarily high anxiety. That anxiety sits like something sharp and dangerous in the center of our communal lives. We move away from it, but we move farther into our political camps, and when we turn to look at those on the other side it's a far more distant and alienated view, looking back from what seem to be opposite poles. In a conversation about it recently, one person said to me, "It feels as though people on the two sides of this divide are almost literally speaking different languages. It feels like it's impossible to understand the other person, impossible to comprehend how or why they could believe what they do, and so you just give up trying to talk."

That loss of a common language is present even within some of our own families, including mine. I have one brother and a father who are committed supporters of George Bush, while others of us feel profound alienation from him and from the direction in which he has led us. But even there -- with intelligent and mostly reasonable people bound into a not-too-dysfunctional family by blood, history and affection -- this election has become a conversation-stopper. How, then, do we even begin to approach a more casual acquaintance, or a stranger, and try to talk about the issues? And how do we have a real civic life or a real democracy if we can't talk to each other?

In our reading, Paul Loeb resurrected the original Greek notion of the polis, from which we draw our word 'politics'. The polis was "the democratic sphere in which citizens, acting in concert, determine the character and direction of their society." There are a couple of things rumbling around in the polis today that are making it very hard for us to see each other as fellow citizens, much less act in concert to shape our society.

The most important of those things is fear. Ever since the attacks of September 11, 2001, we have lived together with a higher level of anxiety than has probably been collectively felt since the dangers and uncertainty of World War II. Fear does funny things to people. Among other things, it tends to short-circuit the smarter parts of our brains. So fear leads us to short-sighted choices, because most of the things we care about fade into the background when we're worried about our own safety or the safety of those we love.

Political analysts point to fear as one of the reasons people tolerate and even support dictators, at least in the beginning: the order they impose is one way to take away the pain of uncertainty. Even in less extreme cases, fear can make us turn to simple answers that give us short-term relief, even if our wiser self might know that in the long run, our choice will make things worse. I saw a cartoon recently that showed the proverbial herd of lemmings following their leader toward the brink of a cliff. As the cliff's edge looms ahead of them, one lemming in the rushing mass turns to another with a smile and says, "Isn't it wonderful to have such strong, decisive leadership?"

When we're trying to rediscover or rebuild the shaky little bridges that connect us to those who believe differently from us, it would be a good thing if we could remember, quite consciously, the anxiety that floats like a little cloud behind so much that's going on right now. It lets us be a little kinder, cut a little more slack, listen with a little more patience and respect even to opinions so far from our own that they sound like a foreign language to us.

But beyond this, remembering the anxiety of our times can let us get a grip on our own fear. Yes, it feels as though the stakes are very high in these elections; yes, the issues involved are very important and we care about them very deeply. But this is not apocalypse. Our democracy is a strong one, despite all its flaws and vulnerabilities, and it will not dry up and blow away on November 3rd no matter who is elected.

When we let ourselves fall into the extreme language born of our fears, we feed and magnify those fears. And no matter how sane and centered we may be, none of us make our best or most noble decisions out of fear.

The second thing rumbling around in our polis today is the misappropriation of religion. For a long time now it's been standard practice for politicians to wrap themselves in God in about the same way they wrap themselves in the flag. It's a moderately offensive practice, but easy to ignore, like the saccharine-sounding line at the end of a speech, "God bless America" that sounds so much like "have a nice day".

That has changed with the current administration. For the first time in my memory, there is a president in power who both suggests and seems to believe that he is President because God willed it, and that the choices he makes are God's choices. He has used scripture to describe himself and his choices. He spoke of the U.S. battle against terrorism by saying, "the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it." These words were used in scripture to apply not to a nation, but to Jesus as the Christ.

Most of you will have heard about a recently released movie called, "Faith in the White House" that has been airing particularly on evangelical Christian television. It is a propaganda piece, a testimony to Bush's strong Christian faith. But it goes beyond that because like the President himself, it draws a direct line between his religious faith and the absolute truth. Toward the end, one of the narrators says, " Will George W. Bush be allowed to finish the battle against the forces of evil that threaten our very existence? …. [He] has set the example for maintaining faith in the face of unrelenting criticism …Will the faith of George Bush be sufficient to keep us in God's hands today? Perhaps-if we all join our faith to his."

This willingness to bind religious faith to a national and global political agenda is immensely dangerous. It turns political disagreements into religious absolutes, around which there can be no dialogue or debate. If the President is in power by God's will, then whose will is served by those who want to replace him with someone else? If America is acting out God's will, then anyone who stands against us should be ignored, no matter how reasoned their opposition. If America is following a divine mandate, then no matter what the consequences of our actions we can have nothing for which to repent because we cannot have sinned. And if I believe that George Bush is shining with God's seal of approval, then how can I view those who vote against him as my brothers or sisters, as my fellow citizens?

In our opening hymn this morning we sang the words, "Ever insurgent let me be/ Make me more daring than devout/ From sleek contentment keep me free/ And fill me with a buoyant doubt." Democracy requires doubt. It is based on the assumption that by mixing with one another, hearing conflicting opinions and bumping up against different values, we will sometimes change our minds. Change our minds -- what a concept!! My friend and colleague Tom Schade is someone I find to be compassionate, witty and a generally A-plus addition to my life. He's also someone with whom I disagree, sometimes passionately, about things that matter a whole lot to both of us, like the war in Iraq.

Sometimes the disagreements are painful because, as Tom puts it, we all have this tendency to say, "I like you so much, how come you're not just like me?" But the whole point of democracy is to help us live together in harmony with people who are not just like us. So it's important that we name this twisting of religious language and imagery into the political fabric, and that we resist it. No matter which party we choose for our loyalty, we should not tolerate any efforts to tie that party's wagon to God's train. Whether we're conservative or liberal or something outside of those labels, we should resist the urge to demonize the opposition, no matter how passionately we disagree.

This isn't a struggle between angels and demons, but between flawed, confused human beings who need to listen carefully to the yearnings below our differences, and watch with tender attention for those places where we touch each other on common ground.

E.B. White once said, "Democracy is based on the suspicion that more than half the people are right more than half the time." Despite how high the emotions are running as this presidential election approaches, we can at the very least take heart that this time around, far more than half of the people are going to vote. A lot of those people have become much more involved in politics in the last few months than they have ever been before in their lives. That's good for us, good for our democracy, as we keep on teaching ourselves and each other what it means to be a citizen.

James Baldwin once said, "Words like ''freedom,'' ''justice,'' ''democracy'' are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous …effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply." To which I will simply add: AMEN.