The Rev. Ann R. Lougee
July 1, 2007
Patriotism, Politics and Religion
2 Kings 2:1-2,6-14

Elijah the prophet had been engaged in a protracted campaign against King Ahab. While the Torah laid out rules to assure that resources were distributed equitably and people did not lose claim to their inheritance of land, Ahab set about dispossessing people from their ancestral lands by any means he could. Employing trickery and violence to accomplish his purposes, he drove others into poverty and homelessness while he amassed more and more wealth and power.

But Elijah dared to confront King Ahab. A prophet is not a fortune-teller but one who sees the contrast between what is and what could be or should be. So Elijah the prophet dared to speak truth to power, to confront the king on his unjust practices. Furthermore, when he knew that his time was over, he chose a successor, Elisha, and commissioned him to complete the job, indeed to take it much further than he, Elijah, had done -- in fact to mount a bloody coup to depose one king and anoint another.

Wait a minute! Those are political words and actions! Elijah is a religious figure, isn't he? What's going on here?

We 21st-century Americans take for granted that the separation of church and state was a founding principle for this nation. Indeed, the Congregational church, which I assume we all know was the earliest predecessor church of the United Church of Christ, greatly influenced the acceptance of that founding principle. Our Congregational forebears who colonized New England in the early 1600's were concerned that government should not dictate these matters to individuals, so that each person could decide how to live both of those moral dimensions of life.

For it was clear to them, as it had been clear to Elijah and as it was 900 years later to Jesus, that the moral dimensions of a person's life necessarily include both religion and politics. The intent of keeping government and religion separate is not to keep us from using our moral sense in the public sphere but to prevent the imposition of any one religion as a state religion to the exclusion of others.

One of the most noted and respected commentators on the moral dimensions of life in our day is journalist Bill Moyers, whom many of us have watched on TV for years. You may know that he is an ordained Baptist minister, but you may not know that he and his wife have been members of a UCC church for 40 years. He was one of the keynote speakers last week in Hartford at the UCC's 50th anniversary General Synod celebration, and I want to share with you some of what he said.
Since he spoke for 57 minutes, I've obviously had to omit a great deal, but I've tried to save the essence to convey here on this 4th of July weekend when we reflect on our nation's creation and the principles that underlay its inception. Here's some of what he said:

"You believe in the democracy of the pew, in the authority and power of the local congregation, and so do I. You believe in a witness based on the historic tradition of scripture but also the lived experience of today, and so do I. You believe...in Faith Seeking Understanding, the old story reconciled with the new discoveries of science and reason, and so do I. You believe in the power and the promise of democracy, and so do I.

"I thank God...for your witness and for the storied heritage of this Church. This United Church has the lineage that has influenced the American Experiment far beyond its numbers...You have raised the prophetic voice against the militarism, the materialism and the racism that chokes America's arteries. You have placed yourself in the thick of the fight for social justice.

"You have aligned yourself on the side of liberty, equality, justice and compassion, a church of prominent firsts, the first to ordain an African American, the first to ordain a woman, the first to ordain an openly gay person, and the first to have a Baptist to deliver your keynote address. Justice Brandeis might have been speaking of this Church when he said the secret of liberty is courage.

"For this courage, you have been attacked. Like other mainstream churches across the land, you have been in the bull's eye of a highly organized and heavily funded campaign by corporate, political and religious forces who would stifle the prophetic voices that speak truth to power and call the Empire to repentance.

"Fifty years ago when this UCC fellowship was forged, mainline churches were part of the progressive awakening that put the force of law behind civil rights, and spread opportunity and wealth further than ever before in our history. Think about it. Half a century ago, America seemed on the verge of at last getting it right. Fewer than 150 years had passed since our Declaration of Independence had let loose in the world the radical notion of equality in the sight of God and under the rule of law. Eleven signers of that Declaration were members of UCC predecessor churches. Those words can still cause the heart to race:

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

"Once those words were abroad, every human being who could hear or read them could imagine another world possible. They could think differently about the value that society had assigned their life.

"I've come today to say that America's revolutionary heritage and America's revolutionary spirit -- of life, liberty and the pursuit of justice, of government of, by and for the people – is under siege. And if churches of conscience don't take the lead in their rescue and their revival, we can lose our democracy.

"You know, nothing seems to embarrass the political class today. Not the war in Iraq that bleeds dry so many lives...They're not embarrassed that more children are growing up in poverty in America than in any other industrial nation. They're not embarrassed that millions of workers are actually making less money today in real dollars than they did twenty years ago, despite the fact that they're putting in longer and longer hours.

"They're not embarrassed by the fact that we have the most advanced health care in the world, and yet nearly 44 million Americans, eight out of ten of them in working families, are uninsured and cannot get care they need. You can't even get them to acknowledge that we're experiencing a shift in poverty.
"For years, the people at the bottom of our ladder were single jobless mothers. For years they were told they would move up the economic ladder if they would only go to school, work hard, and get married. But now poverty is showing up where we didn't expect it: among families that include two parents, a worker and a head of the household with more than a high school education. These are the newly poor. And our political elites expect them to climb out of poverty on a downwardly escalating moving escalator.

"I have to confess to you here. It's a mystery to me! Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these.' Then you have to wonder, how the self-declared Christian nation leaves so many children to suffer! According to UNICEF's report card for 2007, our country ranks near the bottom in child well-being in the developed world, far lower even than former Communist countries like Poland and the Czech Republic. We are dead last among 21 countries in measures of health and safety for children.

"What's going on? ...For years now, our political and economic system has been fixed to favor people at the top. A small fraction of American households have been guarding a huge concentration of wealth and income while large corporations and financial institutions have obtained more and more power over who wins and who loses.

"Now I'm going to quote some statistics. And I know the eyes glaze over when statistics are mentioned – but a great mentor of mine at the University of Texas once told me that it's the mark of a deeply educated person to be deeply moved by statistics. I want to see ... if you are moved by these statistics.

"In 1960 the gap in terms of wealth between the top 20% and the bottom 20% was 30-fold. Now it's 75-fold. Since 1979, the share of pre-tax income going to the top 1% of American households has risen by 7 percentage points. At the same time, the share of income going to the bottom 80% has fallen by 7%.

"Even the bargaining power of the once-privileged White college graduates has declined significantly in the last 30 years, along with those of male high school graduates. This left 80% of all income gains over these 30 years in the hands of that 1%.

"It's like inviting a hundred people over for some pie, cutting the pie into 5 slices, giving 4 of the slices to just one person, and leaving one slice for the remaining 99. Don't be surprised if they fight over it. Which is exactly what's happening when people look at their wages and their taxes, and end up hating the government for everything it does!

"America was not meant to be a country where the winner takes all. Through a system of checks and balances, we were going to maintain a healthy equilibrium. Because equitable access to public resources is the life blood of any democracy, Americans made primary schooling free to all. Because everyone deserves a second chance, debtors, especially the relatively poor, were protected by state law against their rich creditors...

"Not now. In the early 1970s, Richard Nixon's Attorney General, who wound up in jail, disgraced, like this one may... Nixon's Attorney General, John Mitchell, gloated, "This country is going to go so far to the right, you won't recognize it." And thirty years ago, a class war was declared from the top down against the idea and ideal of equality.

"It has been driven ever since by a radical elite, seeking to gain ascendancy over politics and to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons and the intellectual and cultural frameworks that check the excesses of private power. From land, water, and other natural resources, to the media and the broadcast and digital spectrums, to scientific discovery and medical breakthroughs, a broad range of America's public resources is undergoing a powerful shift toward elite control, contributing substantially to those economic pressures on ordinary Americans that deeply affect household stability, family dynamics, social mobility, political participation and civic life.

"The unmitigated plunder of the public trust has spread a spectacle of political corruption across America that has no equivalent, except for the first Gilded Age. Back then, privilege controlled politics and the purchase of votes, the corruption of elections officials, the bribing of legislatures, the lobbying of special bills and the flagrant disregard of laws, threatened the very foundations of democracy, as it does now. And without the help of Walter Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel, and without those people of conscience who got out and fought, the Gilded Age would have triumphed, and we would not have had the egalitarian reforms of the first part of the twentieth century...

"One recent morning, Judith and I arrived early at New York's Riverside Church where we often attend. In the quietness of the hour, I picked up a Bible from the pew, and opened it randomly to the Gospel of Matthew, where the story of Jesus of Nazareth unfolds, chapter by chapter. The birth at Bethlehem, the baptism in the River Jordan, the temptation in the wilderness, the sermon on the mount, the healing of the sick and the hungry, the parables, the calling of the disciples, the journey to Jerusalem and always embedded like pearls throughout the story, the teachings of compassion, forgiveness and reconciliation. In these pages, we are in the presence of one who clearly understands the power of love, the joy of mercy, and the healing of kindness.

"But suddenly, as I was reading ... the story turned. Jesus' demeanor changes. The tone and temper of the narrative shifts, and the Prince of Peace suddenly becomes a Disturber of the Peace.

Then Jesus went into the temple of God, and drove out all those who had bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers, and he said to them, 'It is written, my house shall be called, A House of Prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.

"No cheek turned there. No second mile traveled. On the contrary, Jesus turns angry. He passes judgement. And he takes action. Jesus threw the rascals out. And sitting in the pew that morning, I thought of what I've been saying to you today, how in the past generation as the number of the poor has increased, wages fell, health and housing costs exploded, and wealth and media became more and more concentrated, prophetic religion lost its voice, and the religious right drowned out everyone else, and they hijacked Jesus.

"They hijacked the very Jesus who stood in his hometown and proclaimed, "The Lord has anointed me to preach the Good News to the poor." The very Jesus who told 5000 hungry people that all, that not just the people in the box seats, would be fed.

The very Jesus who challenged the religious orthodoxy of the day by feeding the hungry on the Sabbath, who offered kindness to the prostitute and hospitality to the outcast, who said "The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to little children," who raised the status of women, and treated even the hated tax collector like a citizen of the Kingdom. The indignant Jesus who drove the money changers from the temple has been hijacked, and turned from the friend of the dispossessed into a guardian of privilege, a militarist, a hedonist, a lobbyist... sent prowling the halls of Congress, in Guccis, seeking tax breaks and loopholes for the powerful, costly new weapons systems, and public policies punitive to people without political power.

"My friends, some say your church is ... dying. 1.2 million against the Southern Baptists' 16 million and growing. They say your church is ... lame, and limp, and liberal. And they're coming after you. You can read about how the Institute for Religion and Democracy is after your local congregations. But you know ... they don't take on people they're not afraid of. And it is a small, committed, determined People of Conscience, like the UCC, who can turn this country around!

And Bill Moyers continues, "...this new struggle for a just world – it's not a partisan affair. God is not a liberal or conservative. God is not a Democrat or Republican. She may be a Baptist, I don't know.

"But to see whose side God is on, just go to the record. It's the widow and the orphan, the stranger and the poor who are blessed in the eyes of God. It is kindness and mercy that prove the power of faith, and it's justice that measures the worth of the state, not empire. Kings are held accountable for how the poor fare under their reign; Presidents, too. Prophets speak to the gap between rich and poor as a reason for God's judgement. Poverty and justice are religious issues, and Jesus moves among the disinherited."

So says Bill Moyers, a fellow UCC member, one who knows what goes on in the halls of power, one who thinks deeply about what the moral imperative of being a follower of Jesus is, and who issues the challenge to us. Soon we will have a DVD of his entire speech available for viewing here at the church, as well as that of UCC member Senator Barack Obama, also a keynoter for General Synod. Stay tuned.

As we celebrate the 4th of July, I submit to you that the most patriotic thing we can do is to find ways to be the prophetic voices that are needed to turn our country back to its founding values of liberty and justice for all, equal opportunity, equal access to the law. I believe it's what Elijah would do. Let's pick up the mantle which has fallen from him. I believe it's what Jesus would do. Amen.