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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 15, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
One of our UU principles is “the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.”
Sermon
E. B. WHITE: Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT: In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.
HOWARD WINTERS: Civilization is the process in which one gradually increases the number of people included in the term ‘we’ or ‘us’ and at the same time decreases those labeled ‘you’ or ‘them’ until that category has no one left in it.
Our seven principles are at the center of Unitarian Universalism. Of course, given this movement, there is a bit of controversy. They are not to be read as a creed, giving us a line to toe as we articulate what we believe. They are a “sense of the group,” to use a Quaker phrase.
The fifth principle says that we covenant together to affirm and promote “The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and In society at large.” Our congregations are run with a combination of representative democracy and an old fashioned Vermont town meeting.
In order for Democracy in congregations to work well we have to trust that our input is needed in order to make things work. We have to rouse ourselves and develop an interest in the articulation of the purposes and direction of the church. That’s why we put money and time into this church. That wakes up your attention and makes you feel like you are integral to the running of the place. We have to trust our instinct and our brain and say our opinion about how things are run,
Democracy works best when we trust the process. It’s sometimes hard to do that. Winston Churchill famously said that Democracy is the worst form of government there is, except for all the others that have been tried.
Let me talk about churches first, then we’ve mention our country. In a lot of churches, that’s hard for people. Sometimes you hear that the rich people run everything. Sometimes you hear that the retired people run everything .. Mostly it’s the people who have time, energy and willingness to run things who run everything, although people also help run things here who have very little extra time or money. In a friend’s congregation, one Sunday a party of people came to him after the service, very upset, asking about what this “Core Committee” was. “Core Committee?”
“Yes,” said one of them. “I always suspected there was a committee that ran everything, and now I know because I overheard two people talking about it in the sanctuary after church.”
Turns out they were talking about the Decor Committee. Someone dear had donated a very ugly piece of art to the church and insisted that it be put up behind the pulpit. A Decor Committee was formed to keep this from happening again.
We can do pretty well with democracy in this congregation, and we want to. We have a covenant for our meetings that states that we invite opposing points of view, and that those be heard respectfully, Once in a while the covenant is broken, and whoever broke it gets a nice letter from the President reminding them of the covenant. We vote, and the votes are fairly counted. We don’t attain the ideal, but we aim for it. We can see it from here.
I sure do wish I could stop here, but our principle says we want to promote Democracy in our society at large. Leaving aside the question of whether we can trust those in power (our whole system of government is set up in the belief that you had better not trust anyone in power). Can we trust our information? Can we trust the voting process?
As I have studied about Democracy, I have read many opinions about obstacles to a smoothly running Democracy
One obstacle is that people don’t know the rules about how the governing process works. We need Civics education, and we will be exploring how to do that for ourselves and our children in this congregation.
Fairness Doctrine
One obstacle to Democracy, in some people’s view, is that in August 1987, under the Reagan administration, the FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine by a 4-0 vote. The Fairness Doctrine, as many of you remember, required radio, TV and print news to cover both sides of the issue they were covering. When the Supreme Court first declared it Constitutional, they stated that if it ever were to inhibit free speech it should be scrapped. In the mid 80’s the FCC decided that there were no longer a limited number of stations possible, what with cable (and now the Internet) and since there were not limited sources for news, each one could do as it pleased and not have to cover both sides. In the law of unintended consequences, people have “red” stations and “blue” stations now, and there seem to be “red” facts and “blue” facts. Polarization hurts Democracy. On the other hand, the re-instatement of the FD might dull uninhibited talkshow energy by forcing hosts to conform to the government’s view of balance.
Another obstacle to the clean running of government of the people, by the people, for the people, is that corporations are now treated under the law like people. Tom Stites wrote a well-researched article about this in a special issue of THE WORLD magazine that was all about corporations and politics.
The fourteenth amendment guarantees “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Corporations gained personhood through aggressive court maneuvers culminating in an 1886 Supreme Court case called Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific. Until then, only people were protected by the Bill of Rights, and the governments the people elected could regulate corporations as they wished to. But with “personhood,” corporations steadily gained ways to weaken government restraints on their behavior-and on their growth. After steady progress over the decades, they made huge strides in the 1970s through Supreme Court rulings that awarded them Fourth Amendment safeguards against warrantless regulatory searches, Fifth Amendment double jeopardy protection, and the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury. On the surface, when the big corporations and people have the same rights, they are equal, and the playing field is level. But the size and wealth of corporations tip the field toward the corporations so the field becomes too steep to play on. Just how powerful have corporations become? The biggest ones are so big that in 2001 fifty-three of the world’s hundred largest economies were corporations and only forty-seven were nations. For example, the annual sales of Wal-Mart that year exceeded the gross domestic product of Sweden. And corporations are growing: Five years earlier, only fifty-one of the planet’s biggest economies were corporations; since then corporate expansion crowded two more nations out of the Top 100.
If a nation-sized corporation with its huge treasury and squadrons of lawyers wants to exercise its free speech rights in a shouting match with a citizen who is exercising her or his free speech rights, can this be a fair fight?
The Supreme Court has ruled that corporate political speech includes the right to spend millions on lobbying in Washington and to contribute more millions to political campaigns, and corporations spend to make friends in Washington.
“The end result,” says Ward Morehouse, an activist in his 70’s who is a third generation UU, “is that they exercise greater rights than actual persons, and this is an absurd situation.” Morehouse says that in addition to the rights granted them by the Supreme Court, under the law corporations have limited liability, can live on indefinitely, and, while their employees may be tried in criminal courts, corporations themselves cannot.
Stites. UU WORLD magazine
Corporations live forever, and they are rich, with less moral sense than individuals, with less investment in the far future over current profits, as current profits are how their shareholders measure their desirability, therefore their viability. What if there were individuals with no children, no relatives, endless funds, who would live forever and be able to pursue goals and vendettas, with the brain of ten people, with little morality and the mandate to make money at the expense of every other matter? This person would be a force with which to be reckoned.
A lawyer said : “Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” Who was that? Abe Lincoln
We need to wake up and join the protest. Our UUA President Bill Sinkford called us to action:
“There is work to be done. I’m not talking about simply affirming the importance of voting, nor of simply promising to vote ourselves. I’m talking about mobilizing to get out there and work to prevent the travesty of the last election from recurring. We want to see this nation’s promise of democracy restored, and to do what we can to ensure that everyone’s vote gets counted. “
We join Women for Good Government, or Better Together, or any of the 3000 new groups registered on the Indivisible site. We do what those congressional staffers (Lloyd Doggett’s staffers) who are now being listened to nation wide.
Mostly we do not let ourselves despair. We get trained for Sanctuary in the Streets, where we learn how to interrupt ICE officers seeking to arrest an undocumented person by asking for warrants, and making sure they are acting the way they should act with citizens watching.
My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.
You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.
I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.
Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.
In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.
We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn’t you say you were a believer? Didn’t you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn’t you ask for grace? Don’t you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.
What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.
One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.
Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.
There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.
The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.
By Clarissa Pinkola Estes
American poet, post-trauma specialist and Jungian psychoanalyst, author of Women Who Run With the Wolves.
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