Since the earliest Puritan days in New England there have been Election Sermons. Puritan preachers, and then Congregationalist ones, and then Unitarian ones delivered them. The Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale delivered one — in the great triumphant moment in his career, you may remember — and then immediately confessed his sin and walked to the gallows with Hester and Pearl and expired.

It was a triumphant moment because each year one minister would be chosen to deliver the thing before the legislature, in the State House. Big moment for the invitee. They didn't invite me. They don't invite anybody anymore. It's that tricky thing about church and state. Now Election sermons have found a new venue in churches and synagogues, like this one, now.

These things could be courageous, or merely stately, depending on how much the preacher cared about ingratiating himself to the legislators. Mostly they came to be thought of as jeremiads, as in Jeremiah, which doesn't bring to mind words like "cheerful."

Which brings us to a question that matters as much as the specific content of the sermon. It's this: how do we face the appalling facts of our situation? What is it that a spiritual community is supposed to do with those appalling facts, or do about them? What, in the context of those facts, is our gathering here, as a spiritual community, supposed to be about?

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This past weekend I stood on a windswept beach on the inner Cape with a bunch of Unitarian Universalist scholarly-types, while Judit Geldard played Albinoni's Adagio on her violin. Moments before, one of the group had related how some species or another in yet another public parkland was being wiped out by a deal the government had made with a mining company, which was now operating in the park. Then we stood in the circle, enveloped in the music, and then one by one walked to the edge of the ocean. What I hadn't said in that circle kept ringing in my ears. I looked out at the whitecaps and said it to myself: "If we don't change our ways, turn from our greedy consumption of fossil fuels, cease our assault on nature, — these injured waters will rise in protest and inundate these shores, and New York, and London, and Oslo, and Boston, and we will wonder what could have driven our madness."

I hadn't said it, partly because the words weren't quite framed before the strains of violin began, but mostly because sometimes I get a little timid. People don't wish to be depressed, don't appreciate downers. They would have thought it kind of melodramatic.

And then I knew, as I have known at other times, a reason for the abject failure of our press and our political leadership in this greatest of crises facing us right now. Lack of courage. Nobody wants to hear it and they — we — want to be liked and appreciated. But if we're going to face the truth of it, and if there's to be any hope, changing the subject is not a luxury we can afford.

I've heard it of course, and of course it hurts and I cannot, not without being guilty of the worst kind of dereliction of my duty, tailor the message to what people want to hear. Folks, we're living in the face of a crisis like none humanity has ever faced. How, then, do we carry on our lives; how do we bear the realities; and what, in the face of them, do we come here for?

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When you check the polls and see how the public is buying the idea of a triumphalist American empire, and contempt for the rest of the world, while ignoring the real threats — you wonder how it could be. You begin to understand why Thomas Carlyle favored a monarchy.

But the public responds to what those who have any influence seem to be taking the most seriously, what they seem to think is important. No one wants to believe bad news if they don't have to. So if the political leaders give the subject very little attention, and the stories about it never appear above the fold on page 1, well, maybe it isn't true, guess it's not important. When it mattered, the stories questioning the case that was being made for war were buried inside the newspapers.

And now we're nine days from a momentous election. So much is at stake. Think of the state legislatures including our own where the right to marry and so many matters of economic justice hang in the balance. There's the Governor's Council and there are 34 United States Senate races, and the entire House of Representatives. And there is the Presidency. Four years ago, the press and the public and the political leadership let the Florida political apparatus get away with massive fraud: thousands of African Americans disqualified from voting by a tricky computer stunt that matched black Floridians' names with the names of felons all over the country. I saw the report on the BBC in Scotland. You never saw it here.

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But this is what we face. A born-again President who doesn't have to pay attention to the facts because God has spoken to him and told him what to do — in fact, anointed him for a special mission, or crusade, and brought him to the White House miraculously without even having had to win the election.

The millions of believers have a special way of looking at all this. You might remember that I, myself, am a refugee from fundamentalist Christianity. Here's how it works: when God has chosen a leader, their sins don't matter. Like King David, who sinned with Bathsheba, seduced her and got her pregnant, but you could disregard his character because he was God's anointed. Pat Robertson speaks for millions when he tells CNN: "I think God's blessing him, and I think it's one of those things that, even if he stumbles and messes up — I just think God's blessing is on him. . . . the blessing of heaven is on Bush. It's just the way it is."¹

Certainly, he thinks so himself. He has created an atmosphere in the White House where no one may question him. In a flood of books and press reports, former government officials and a few anonymous present ones tell us about it.²

We don't have to wonder why the Intelligence agencies gave him cooked intelligence: it's what he wanted, to justify the war God told him to wage. They knew what they had to do. Military and weapons experts who knew those aluminum tubes couldn't be used to make weapons, knew the report about Niger was false, knew the realities on the ground — were ordered to remain silent. Those who've tried to raise questions or introduce contradictory data have incurred the wrath of the President. Everybody now knows not to try it. Just Friday another report showed how Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, brazenly misrepresented the intelligences agencies' assessment and claimed, contrary to that intelligence, that there were ties between the Baghdad government and the Al Qaeda terrorists. For God, you can lie.

A funny thing happened on the way to the election. God told President Bush to start a war with Iraq, and then told Pat Robertson it would be a very bad idea to make war on Iraq and it would be a mess. Why does God tell Pat Robertson one thing and George Bush something else?

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What does it take to shake a faith like that? It has to be shaken. We have seen faith-based lies, and faith-based hate and bigotry, in spades lately. Does religion matter?

We shouldn't still be wondering whether religion matters.

And the only thing that can displace an outworn, inadequate religious vision is a stronger, wider, more far-seeing religious vision, another kind of faith. I wonder if we really understand the value, the worth, of this faith of ours? It inspired that Constitution and Declaration of Independence and we need it now. I think we need a little UU evangelism. So far, the contest of ideas and of passions isn't going very well.

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I've been profoundly disturbed during this campaign, as I was four years ago, that we hear nothing of the advancing global ecological collapse. The whole scientific community — unless you're talking about the scientists hired by the petroleum, automobile, and electric industries — science is united in warning us of catastrophe unless we cut our use of fossil fuels by sixty or seventy percent, now. The Kyoto Protocol, which our government has rejected as too hard on our commercial interests, would cut those emissions by only 7 percent and warming by only 1 percent. Later. Science says that what Nature demands is a 60 or 70 percent reduction, now.

The British Prime Minister puts it like this:

On climate change, we need to build on Kyoto but we should recognize one stark fact: even if we could deliver on Kyoto, it will at best mean a reduction of 1 per cent of global warming. But we know . . . we need a 60 per cent reduction worldwide. in truth, Kyoto is not radical enough.

and the British Secretary of State for Environment, Margaret Beckett, said this two years ago:

We've known for some time that we have to worry about the impacts of climate change on our children's and grandchildren's generations. But we now have to worry about ourselves as well.

French President Jacques Chirac told the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg — an event the Bush Administration snubbed —

Our house is burning down and we're blind to it . . .The earth and humankind are in danger and we are all responsible. It is time to open our eyes. Alarms are sounding across all the continents . . . We cannot say that we did not know! Climate warming is still reversible. Heavy would be the responsibility of those who refused to fight it.

In a relatively short time, the climate change will bring pandemics of disease, waves of refugees, mass starvation beginning in the poorest nations, and the desperation will fuel hatred, extremism and terrorism. We think we've seen terrorism?

The rising seas will flood coastal cities, — the changed patterns of the gulf steam and winds will render areas of Europe and North America uninhabitable because of cold and other areas uninhabitable because of heat. There will be violent, devastating weather.

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Do you know what that means to a fundamentalist Christian?

Well, if you didn't know it, to a fundamentalist Christian, these forms of devastation are Signs of the Times prophesied in the Bible, announcing to the world that the Second Coming is at hand. Signs of the end-times. You don't do anything about them. You take them as signs. You don't have to do anything about them: Jesus is coming.

Things like this don't come up in the debates because you aren't supposed to talk about "religion." But wouldn't the American people want to know this? And the job of writing an energy policy was turned over to the biggest polluters from Ken Lay on down. Does religion matter?

Meanwhile Catholic bishops are telling the faithful that it's a sin to vote for John Kerry or perhaps your Representative in the State Legislature because of same-sex marriage and stem cell research and abortion rights, and they are blanketing Catholic churches with guides that call these "non-negotiable issues." Greed and pointless war and ecocide don't qualify for the Bishops' list of serious sins.

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I think we need a few mega-churches of our own in the American South and the North too as a counterweight against this destructive, superstitious nonsense, don't you?

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That's why the fundamentalists don't care about climate change. Why, instead, they want to conquer the world for Christ and what they call "freedom." It's why they think America is ordained to rule the world.

But why the silence from the press, and from liberal candidates?

Instead we are told that the price of gasoline is too high, and we are promised cheap gasoline, the right to drive an oversized motorized behemoth.

And I tell you, the day is not far off when the public will be so enraged about this dereliction of duty on the part of leadership and press that the public will want to tear them limb from limb. But it will be far too late.

Today — today, to get in touch with that rage and develop the strength to remain angry — can do some good.

And whether it be civil liberties, or the scandal of health-care in America, or the corrupt power of corporations, or the fact that both major candidates claim to represent the middle class as if either there were no poor people or we've already given up on them — the chickens will come home to roost.

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The present government has become the Washington headquarters of greedy industries involved in oil and electricity and automobiles. The regulations you thought were protecting us have been undermined, diluted, or removed, quietly, by this government. Five percent of the world's population — us — are producing a quarter of the emissions, 36 percent of the carbon dioxide. Meanwhile our greedy oil-thirst governs our foreign policy, a thoroughly corrupted regime that the world's peoples have come to hate, and that daily drives greater numbers in the Arab world to acts of terrorism. We will not long be able to withstand that ocean of anger. But we never dare to ask, Why is it that they hate us? It is not liberation, but privitization, for which we fight.

If I could ask the President one question, I guess I'd ask him, "Doesn't your religion have anything to say about greed?"

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But why am I talking about this?

I have heard complaints every once in awhile to the effect that messages like this don't furnish them with comfort, but disturb them. They might leave upset and lose sleep. Good. If you can't sleep, write to a Senator, write to a greedy corporation, write a letter to the editor. Then you'll probably sleep just fine.

Why am I telling you this? Because I like to send people away depressed? No. Because we have got to make ourselves heard. Because there are things we must do.

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First, we have to change our ways. We have to change and we have to do it now. We to make the possible visible. Convert to solar heating in our houses — I've started the process. Let's build and extend throughout this congregation and community a set of norms and expectations — shall we call it values? — that will make the kind of energy profligacy we see all around us — make it unthinkable, a disgrace no one wants to be a part of. Let's show what can be done. Let's learn what we need to know to do the things we know need to be done. Let's help each other do this.

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More than that.

Let this be one place where we have the will to face the appalling facts head-on, and then bring our best imagination, and human capacities, and devotion — bring them together here to find real ways to make a real mark, to bear witness, to exert our strength to turn the fulcrum. Is there something more important? Something more satisfying? This here, and this now, require the full measure of our imagination and our passion.

And in our gathering, may we know the importance of holding each other up, believing in each other, encouraging each others' best efforts, binding up the wounds, taking counsel together, conspiring together, find where it is that we can take hold, — to halt the juggernaut of madness, sustained by greed and superstition, that now threaten the community of life.

It doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be.

It's time for a new consciousness and a new humanity. It's time. The world is tired of the regime of greed, and lies, and arrogance. Let the gospel of one humanity, of human possibility, of the sacredness of nature, and of one interdependent web of life — let it go forth. Let it go forth from this place. Because it's in this work, this sacred work — that we'll find the peace, and the fulfillment, and the meaning we long for.

Copyright © 2004 F. Jay Deacon. All rights reserved.

¹ "Without casualties? White House disputes Robertson comment," CNN, 19 October 2004; "Robertson: Bush said no deaths in Iraq," Associated Press, 20 Oct. 2004; "Evangelist: I warned Bush on Iraq," CBS News, 20 Oct. 2004.
² Most recently, see Ron Suskind, "Without a Doubt." New York Times Magazine, 17 October 2004.

Readings

In these five short readings, both writers and letter recipients are Unitarian Universalists.
First, from four letters from Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in the summer of 1854

My dear Parker,

I had just read and admired your great New York [speech], as reported in the Anti-Slavery Standard, when the Commonwealth came this morning with that other fulmination from Boston, [the capture of Anthony Burns]. Such efforts [as yours] will deeply plough the public heart. Other ages will bless you . . .

At last I see daylight. . . . At once should be commenced an organization to secure petitions . . . Get people committed at once to the absolute refusal of the whole wickedness. . . .

The curtain will soon lift up here — Cuba — Haiti — Mexico. You know the plot. And yet the people sleep.

Ever yours, Charles Sumner

My dear Clarke,

I have just read your discourse, with a grateful heart. I am happy that such true words have found welcome in Boston . . .

The Future will need all our energies. . . .

I am humbled in dust, that the Fug. Slave Bill has been again enforced in Boston. In my speech at Faneuil Hall in 1850 . . . I endeavored to mark out the course which should be pursued. Had that been followed, there would have been a moral atmosphere, deadly to the Slave Bill. I think the time has now come for that Public Opinion which shall render the Bill (I never call it a law) ineffective in Mass. Let us make Mass. at least holy ground where the Slave-Hunter shall not come, & then, let us unite to put the National Govt on the side of Freedom.

Ever Yours, Charles Sumner

My dear Emerson,
Amidst hardships & conflicts here I have . . . felt strong in the sympathy of true hearts, beating I know in tune with mine. Yours I have often felt . . .

I am proud of my cause; proud also of the friends who cheer me. . . .

But new outrages are at hand . . . These can be wrestled with successfully by no individual; but by nothing short of a united people. At all times without any flinching, I shall oppose them to the end; but I cry for "help" from the North.

Gratefully & sincerely Ever Yours, Charles Sumner

My dear Parker,
The rulers of the country are the President, with Caleb Cushing, Jefferson Davis, and Forney. Nobody else has influence. These are hot for Cuba and war. The howl of the press here against me has been the best homage I ever received. My opposition to all that iniquity is not merely by speech, but in every available way, and they know it.

Ever yours Charles Sumner.

P.S. The threats to put a bullet through my head and hang me — and mob me — have been frequent. I have always said: "let them come: they will find me at my post."

To Governor John Andrew of Massachusetts, in 1861, about a proposal to save the Union by agreeing to retain slavery where it already exists and the Capital, and to retain the Fugitive Slave Law:

My dear Andrew,

In God's name stand firm! Don't cave, Andrew!

And from the feminist theologian Sharon Welch:

We need to learn that failure to develop the strength to remain angry, in order to continue love and therefore to resist, is to die. . . . [T]he death that is experienced by those who turn from rage, who forego resistance, is nonetheless real. It is the death of the imagination, the death of caring, the death of the ability to love. For if we cease resisting, we lose the ability to imagine a world that is any different than that of the present . . . We lose the ability to care, to love life in all its forms. We cannot numb our pain at the degradation of life without numbing our joy at its abundance.

^— Sharon D. Welch. A Feminist Ethic of Risk. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990, p. 20.

Meditation

We gather today worried, full of anxiety, troubled about the future of the world. We wonder what is to come. We tremble.

There is grey and dark and soon the winter storms will advance. And here we gather.

Let the noise and tumult be stilled in this hour. Let us hear resounding in all things and deep in our souls the calm assurance, the certain peace — of our sure calling in this life, of our high purpose and awakened resolve.

Let there be renewed in us now a deep faith in the hope in our hearts, in the work of our minds and hands, in the vision that fills our souls.

O let us feel and know again our love for the work that is given to us in these times, overcoming the dread that we might fail, overwhelming the doubt that we are not strong and wise to do it.

In the midst of the turmoil
let us know the strength of love, the might of truth, the great force of our hope.

In clarity of mind and heart,
let us stand and not fall,
Rise from despond
and walk on
until the thick fog is lifted
until dullness becomes clarity
and there is good health,
and the losing of chains

And the world awaited becomes the world attained . . .
In this gathered silence.

Parting

Words of Theodore Parker [adapted]:

We look to the future, a future to be made:
a church whose creed is truth, whose worship is love:
A society full of industry, wisdom, and the poetry of life;
A state with unity among all, with freedom for each;
[Religion] without tyranny,
a society without want
a state without oppression
a world with no war.
Shall this ever become fact?
History says, No!
Human nature | says, | Yes!