My UU church asked me to speak. I asked them to speak up.
[This is the text of a talk I gave at my UU church Jul 7, 2013.]
The Subway Rule: If you see something, say something.
Former Obama speechwriter, Jon Lovett (writer for the show, 1600 Penn), gave the commencement address at Pitzer college last May. He said we’re “drowning in BS, utterances true enough not to be lies, wrecking our trust, lowering our standards for the truth and making it hard to achieve anything.”
There’s a book about BS by Laura Penny called: “Your call is important to us”. One reviewer said Penny “disembowels the culture of globalized, supersized, consumerized BS, from Bush’s White House to Big Pharma. She shows us how this smorgasbord of phoniness alienates us from one another, breeds apathy, and makes us just plain stupid.”
So, is religion an oasis of sincerity in this morass of lies? Billions turn to it as a bastion of sincerity and authenticity. But even a glance tells us that it must be a purveyor of mis and disinformation. Even if one of the religions is true, that leaves billions of wrong believers! If they’re all wrong, well, then the whole religious world just is BS with no pool because there’s no dry land at all. In such a climate, merely stating the obvious is an invigorating tonic, but it’s one that can cost you votes, your job, or your friends. So what role does religion have to play in our culture? UU says it is a religion, but what does saying it is a religion add? Perhaps religion is just an imperialistic term, one that claims what is best about being human, but adds nothing of its own.
I’d like to share bits of my lifelong encounter with religion, and how I ended up with you, here, for now. Some of what I’ll share are skirmishes I’ve had in the culture war. I don’t like conflict, but I don’t avoid it at any cost. There are times I will speak up, just as we speak up when our kids are in danger or not getting their needs met.
When American Atheists held their national convention in Des Moines in 2011, I contacted their president, David Silverman, and suggested we invite the UUs to host a booth. He said, “Nope. No religions.” He told me they had tried it before and it didn’t work, because in the public’s eyes, religion just means supernaturalism, favoritism and unsupported faith claims. He understands he has many friends in UU churches, but he’s a savvy marketer and can’t afford to muddle his message: religion is the problem. Because I’m not in his position, I can afford to be more accommodating. There is much good in religion because there are good people in it. It has never made sense that being religious requires belief on poor, or purely subjective, evidence. I used to say I was a religious atheist, but I had to explain myself every time I said it. And it was an affront to my atheist friends. I’m religious in the sense I’m devoted to life’s ultimate concerns and I’m comfortable in churches, at least ones that will have me. But life’s ultimate concerns don’t need religion! ‘Religion’ is a word we use as a marker, and it can be used to set us apart. Religion doesn’t own life’s richest experiences. The rising number of ‘nones’, the religiously unaffiliated, know that. And people who sleep in on Sundays know that. They aren’t missing anything; they just aren’t religious.
Of course, UUs aren’t part of the BS problem. We can’t be wrong because we’re creedless. Instead of creeds, we have values. We’re clean, but risk being seen as empty. We’re mostly earthly and don’t offer the grand things usually associated with religion. The GOP is struggling with its creed, trying to update its platform without losing who they are. But will it pay the price? The price is putting reason and evidence above doctrine, and billions of people have been told that’s the wrong thing to do, by religion. UU is well-situated to serve the growing number of people who love religion, but demand modernity: acceptance of science and rejection of sectarian, supremacist views.
So, what to do? Lovett’s hoping we have reached Peak BS. He thinks there is a demand for Authenticity. He cites Jon Stewart and Louis CK. We trust the satirists more than the ones pretending to be sincere. We’re sick of the postmodern rootlessness, but we’re skeptical of anything that lays claim to truth. Good, we should be. And we should be.
Lovett told the graduating students to be cognizant of their inexperience, but recognize the value in their fresh sets of eyes. Likewise, we have to admit our ignorance, while speaking our truth. We know some things, and that’s not our fault. Once you care about anything, there are better and worse ways to behave. These ways fall out and follow from whatever we value.
He cites the subway rule: If you see something, say something. I’ve come to appreciate this stance, for several reasons. First, when I am silent, I am not standing up for myself. Second, I am letting others who might think as I do think that they’re alone, when they’re not. Finally, I am giving the impression there is no issue at all. I’m looking the other way. I might be wrong about an issue, but it would be further wrong to stay quiet out of fear that I might be wrong. The subway rule encourages us to speak up, just in case there’s an issue.
But wait. The subway rule is about stopping terrorist bombers and the like. Religion is often comforting and harmless, right? Of course, it often is, but not always. So, it’s not religion that’s the problem. It is BS, whether it’s found in religion or not. Religion is not the only source of BS. Here are just a few examples.
A psychic in Hardin, Texas was recently hit with a $6.8 million defamation judgment for telling 911 that 32 bodies were buried in some poor family’s backyard. Of course, that claim was unfounded. Psychic Sylvia Browne told Amanda Berry’s mother that her daughter was dead, then we learned she had been kept for 10 years in a Cleveland home. Does UU ‘make room’ for psychic ability? I worry that it does. And we’re prone to saying things like The arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. Or The earth is our mother. (I can tell you this much, she’s not like my mother.) The weird thing is this: we can say these things only if they aren’t taken too seriously! But if other people really make important decisions based on them or their emotions are involved, well, we had better clarify we’re speaking poetically, or be ready to back up such statements. So, what do you mean ‘the earth is our mother’? Will she drive me around and pay for college?
I heard a successful, liberal minister speak about how to get ‘spiritual, not religious’ people to come back to church. His main argument was that ‘the church offers eternity’. He invited questions, so I spoke up. I said that many of those people aren’t buying the afterlife bit. They are grateful to have this one life, the one we are sure of. If there is an afterlife, they don’t think churches have special access to it. I’d like to tell people who have left church that we need them, not that they need us. And living forever isn’t necessary for meaning. If life is not meaningful now, how will extending it forever make it meaningful? And if life is meaningful now, how does its ending reach back in time and remove that meaning? I spoke up because I knew I couldn’t be the only one who felt that way in this large group of liberal religious people. In such situations, there can be a conspiracy of silence. Almost everyone privately has doubts, but assumes everyone else is in agreement, so they keep quiet.
Oprah recently delivered the commencement address at Harvard and received an honorary doctorate of law. In an article about her speech in Time, “Former Dean of Harvard College, Harry Lewis, pointedly noted that, “It seems very odd for Harvard to honor such a high profile popularizer of the irrational. I can’t square this in my mind, at a time when political and religious nonsense so imperil the rule of reason in this allegedly enlightened democracy and around the world.” He spoke up.
Time continued: “Examples of the disrespect for, and not just misunderstanding of, science are everywhere. It’s not just those who ignore climate science (alas, at our peril). [Recall how one candidate] mocked research on fruit flies, ignoring the reality that most of modern genetics is built on the study of this organism, or the factually incorrect belief that women can ‘shut the whole thing down‘ when they are raped to avoid conception.”
Time magazine said, “Oprah’s passionate advocacy extends, unfortunately, to a hearty embrace of phony science. …Oprah’s particular brand of celebrity is not a good fit for the values of a university whose motto, Veritas, means truth.”
“Is not a good fit for…” This is the kind of careful observation we can always make: X does not fit with Y. I often feel obligated to make them, because being silent doesn’t fit with my other values! If you see something, say something. Subway rule.
Am I being too hard on Oprah? Too scientistic? Too arrogant, too closed-minded?
Louisiana recently rejected another attempt to repeal the “Louisiana Science Education Act”, which allows creationism to be taught in schools. It lost by one vote, cast by a believer in shamanic rituals, who was worried that much of life’s meaning would be lost if we only taught science in the schools. There’s more to life than science.
Does religion play loose like this? Um, yes, because people do it. God loves you. Prayer works: God always says Yes, No or Not Yet. God has a plan that includes Moore, OK. The arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. The earth is our mother. I don’t want to ban these statements, but they should raise an eyebrow.
I’d like the religion of the 21st century to avoid any whiff of being a confidence game, of playing on people’s emotions or psychological needs. It should try to be of service in those areas, but avoid any attempts to manipulate them. Of course, there will always be people who want to be manipulated. I don’t want to outlaw hucksterism. I just want to expose it. And I’d like UU to have nothing to do with it.
Ok, so religions contain some BS and UU isn’t immune, but that doesn’t mean we should throw it out. In the current issue of UUWorld, Rev. Victoria Safford asks, “How do I decide which beautiful, clumsy, and imperfect institutions will carry and hold my “name, hand, and heart”?
In March of 2011, I heard Nate Phelps speak at the Reason Rally on the national mall in Washington, DC. Nate is the son of Fred Phelps, and some protestors from Westboro Baptist Church were in the free speech area while Nate was on stage. Nate escaped from his family at midnight on his 18th birthday. Nate said, “They called me a rebel. For years, I wore that name with shame until I realized that confronted with the god of my father, rebellion was the only moral option.” This is my experience. When I got to know the God I was raised to believe in, the only moral option was rebellion.
Many UUs are defectors. Some are refugees, but our camp is so comfortable it’s hard to call them that. Some of us are activists. But most of the ones I have met, and the ones who write for UU publications, are gentle activists. We abhor what we’ve seen in human history, the trading of one dogmatic tyranny for another. So, we’re meek, but we do have spines.
We have public and private faces. In private, many of us have robust, red-meat beliefs, but we’d never presume to foist them on anyone else. But that belief is one that we insist on: that no belief should be forced on anyone, and everyone should be treated equally. We leave personal convictions alone, but public assertions are fair game and often challenged. Holly Near’s “Singing for our lives”, in our songbook as “We are a gentle, angry people”, sums it up.
In The End of Faith, Sam Harris woke many liberal and moderate believers from a comfortable, ecumenical sleep. The deference we normally show religion can cause us to be silent in the presence of evil. If we work for equality, we have to say some positions are wrong, even if they have a religious pedigree. And this is hard for us since we value freedom and equality. But treating people equally does not require us to treat all beliefs equally. In fact, it seems that to be moral ourselves, we can’t. We have to discriminate. Discrimination usually has a negative connotation, but we can’t be moral actors at all without it.
So, to be moral, I have to continually re-evaluate my associations. I’m an American, but should I be? Well, I have to live somewhere, and I can work for change while remaining a citizen. And I can’t avoid responsibility, wherever I go.
Practicality gets in my way. I share many of the motivations behind vegetarianism, I just don’t care enough. I’m not green enough: I don’t live near my job. I don’t ride the bus. I don’t ride my bike. I’m overweight. I don’t give enough to the desperately poor. I look the other way while the NSA performs unreasonable searches. I’ll change if the whole culture changes, but I go along with a lot of evil. I can’t do it all. But I can speak up.
Zach Wahls is still a Boy Scout. Nuns on the Bus are still Catholic. (They work for social justice. Sister Simone addressed the Democratic National Convention in September 2012.) They are the loyal opposition, staying for what is best and speaking up against what is wrong, or for what could be better. Maybe something like this is a way forward. What is not an option is to maintain my affiliations and remain silent, as long as I am as hard on myself as I am on others.
I was raised an Episcopalian. I heard about Noah’s Ark in 2nd grade, but all I remembered was the rainbow. I didn’t see the drowned puppies and children for another 15 years. I learned of the Crucifixion and never wondered if that was the best way God could have forgiven us. I grew up with many loving people there, but I had myself debaptized in Omaha two years ago. My own changed attitudes had already dissolved the covenant my parents had made on my behalf. But it was an important step of recognition. I am a recovering Christian. Christians might prefer that I say I’m recovering from some elements of my religious upbringing. But I’m not just a lapsed or lazy Christian, it’s now necessary for me to repudiate its core tenets. I am a humanist, which means I must be, not against Christians, but against Christianity. I embrace ‘Love your neighbor’, but think that that is at odds with the idea that it is a virtue to choose God over our fellows. So, to borrow from another article in this month’s UU World (about climate change), I didn’t use my shareholder status to encourage disinvestment by the Episcopalian church in its core doctrine. I divested of my shares. I put my energies elsewhere.
Such decisions are not easy ones. I once marveled how anyone could remain in the Catholic Church after the pedophilia scandal. After the 2004 election, I was mystified how anyone could vote Republican. But I’m still an American. So, whenever I see a gulf like this, one that makes other people look plain crazy, I’ve learned to look at myself. I support marriage equality. Bob Vander Plaats, president of The Family Leader, doesn’t. He has planted his stake and by its reckoning our culture is adrift. To understand people like him, I ask, ‘What would outrage me?’ I would be outraged if Roe v Wade were overturned, as it has in practice in a few states. I am outraged that our intelligence apparatus is outside the law. So, to understand those across the divide, I just have to realize that gay marriage is to them what making abortion illegal or performing blanket searches are to me: unacceptable by my values.
But that doesn’t mean our views are on a par. This is the big mistake of relativism and postmodernism. Yes, we should question framings and assumptions. But some ideas go together and some do not. Bob VP’s views and my views are not compatible with the same set of other views! Mine are more egalitarian, they just are. His are more in line with pleasing Yahweh. They just are. “X is not a good fit for Y”. I’d like to say Bob VP’s views are not a good fit for the American ideal of equality. I’d like to corner him into admitting that equality is not a good fit for his brand of Christianity, or at least that it is not its highest value. He’d like to please God first, then be as equal as possible after that.
Many UUs are defectors, but to work together, we can’t just keep defecting. We have to grow roots somewhere, and this often requires compromise. A few postmodernists and anarchists resist even this. They have identified the need for solidity as the enemy of life, of adaptation, and are constantly undermining whatever power structures arise, to keep them from freezing and trapping life. Our ‘creative interchange’ leans a bit in this direction. Creativity is always destructive of something. So, perversely, it is radical and heretical in a UU setting to say we can be certain of anything. But if we can be certain of some things, that surely would not be our fault. I am so sure anthropogenic climate change is occurring, that I think it would be wrong to do nothing. But I can express my certainty like this, as a conditional: “If the science is correct, human activity is harming our planet”. Here’s an even stronger claim, without the conditional: “I am entirely certain that God does not prevent all suffering”. I am also certain of this: “If she could prevent more and doesn’t, well, that raises grave concerns about working with her”.
So, my outrage at the pedophilia scandal, and my outrage over the Iraq war were legitimate. And I don’t have to say my view is only my opinion; those things don’t fit with my values. But I have to start with myself, and I have to do my homework. I have stayed in America despite its great wrongs. I am not vegetarian. I am implicated in many evils, great and small. So before I point out “X does not fit with Y” about a position (and sometimes I must), I have to try to understand it. This is fine. But once I put in the time and find problems, I can no longer keep an open mind and look the other way. I have to speak up. This isn’t to be a busybody. It’s more like being a mandatory reporter, like Ed Snowden may turn out to be.
But I might be wrong, right? Perhaps I should just be quiet, or mostly quiet. I’ve heard that happiness is a good sense of humor and a bad memory. Wouldn’t it be easier to play it safe? In philosophy, quietism results when it can be shown that a problem is the result of confusion or an unjustified assumption. Perhaps quietism can help us. Instead of solving a problem, it dissolves it by saying there’s no problem there in the first place. But it really has to be true to work. We can’t just sweep a real problem under the rug if we care about the truth. Quietism about God and religious differences is often politically smart, but just as often shortsighted and morally problematic. Many of us have been trained by religion to doubt ourselves when we see something that doesn’t add up. But some observations are hard to be quiet about. Under the new Authenticity, we are encouraged to speak up, even if we might be wrong, just in case we are right.
So, can we partner with the Boy Scouts? With the Catholic Church? My previous church served meals at a homeless shelter. So did a Catholic church, until the shelter put out a basket of condoms. The Catholics stopped serving there. I’m sure they went to be of service somewhere else, but not to those people. Can we respect their position? Pope Francis recently said Jesus shed his blood for everyone, including atheists. The Vatican corrected him. Doesn’t sound egalitarian to me. It doesn’t fit.
UU is creedless, but it’s not anything goes. We speak up in the presence of bigotry. This requires us to reject many conceptions of God. It’s often bad form to say this out loud because we don’t know always what another person’s conception of God is.
But what about when people tell us their creed, as Bob Vander Plaats does? My own view is that, to be moral myself, I can’t smile and nod when Bob Vander Plaats
tells me about his God. I have to openly reject that God, whether he exists or not. When he brings up his conception of God, to be silent is complicity. It gives the impression there is no problem. I stand with Nate Phelps on that. I myself can’t be an apatheist. I do care.
Same with the Catholics at the homeless shelter. I can object to their discrimination without even mentioning their reasons for it. Unless they bring them up. Then it is my obligation to say something. All that is necessary for bad ideas to flourish is for good people to say nothing.
When ideas that don’t fit are injected into the conversation, for example, when the presidential inauguration includes prayer, or God is on the money (a Cold War gimmick), I feel obligated to say something to avoid the wrong of omission. Of course, we choose our battles and there is a time and place. But quietism puts that battle off indefinitely. That is to cede moral ground to the status quo. The status quo always has this advantage. It is impossible to be the change we want to see in the world without any friction with others.
Since we know all beliefs can’t be true, quietism about faith conflicts relies on saying, even hoping, that beliefs won’t leak out, they won’t explode, that they don’t matter. But we have beliefs because they matter to us. Can a belief remain private? Only if it’s inconsequential, like liking chocolate more than vanilla. But many beliefs, probably most, leak out. People vote. People discriminate.
And we must discriminate to be moral. It just really matters what basis we discriminate on. There are good and bad grounds for discrimination, and the grounds we choose depend on our other values. If we value equality, we will still discriminate: we will favor things that promote equality. We just won’t favor or disfavor things that people have no choice over, like gender, race or sexual orientation.
But some people are conservative and some are liberal by nature. It’s a very liberal insight that, perhaps, conservatives can’t be blamed for their views! This is part of the vibe behind ecumenicalism. Good people disagree. But relations of ideas hold independently from the people who hold them. So, we push liberal ideas, hoping conservatives will accept them eventually. We have to, to be moral ourselves. We can’t wait for unanimity. The way I’ve found to respect people with whom I disagree is honoring their right to value what they choose, but pointing out the costs. If they don’t care about those costs, then we just disagree. My aim is to show that they actually do, or should, care about those costs.
King borrowed this famous quote from an 1853 sermon by the Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker:
“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”
I don’t know enough to agree with Parker. I don’t see a moral arc, but a frightfully twisted landscape with a few peaks and many valleys. Obama spoke up about this one on April 4, 2008, the 40th anniversary of King’s assassination, then-Senator Obama declared: “Dr. King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. It bends towards justice, but here is the thing: it does not bend on its own. It bends because each of us in our own ways put our hand on that arc and we bend it in the direction of justice.” I agree with him with one important change: If it bends, it bends because each of us works to bend it.
Sure, we have reasons for optimism, which should supplant mere wishful thinking. But what about those who died before such progress? To them, it really matters when all this justice, equity and compassion happens. Justice delayed is justice denied. Now, if humanity is alone, without a god, then there’s no problem. Many of us do our best to promote justice. But UUism mentions God. There’s a pamphlet about God in the entryway. Many of us have had powerful, personal experiences that we take to be evidence of God. That’s fine. But to be credible in our work for social change, it seems we must have a conception of God that is compatible with our other values. If there is a God who can help us, it’s hard to see that he helps people equally. He seems to play favorites. The only possible Gods I have found that fit the facts on the ground are the unconscious god-as-nature, the impotent God-as-bystander, or the powerful God who plays favorites. If the Red Cross behaved like God does during a catastrophe, I couldn’t partner with them. I’ve wrestled with God concepts. I’m open to them. I just can’t find one I can work with that is worthy of the name. I keep looking, but at this point, it would be like finding something that goes faster than light. While I’ve been speaking, about 300 kids have died from hunger alone. Working with God requires that we are convinced she just can’t do any better. Of course, we should do better! But our failings are irrelevant to God’s role. If she’s there, she either can’t reduce suffering further, or she doesn’t care to. There are no other options.
Richard Dawkins kicked off the New Atheist movement with these words: Let’s now stop being so damned respectful! I don’t think it’s about respect. It’s about plain honesty. Howling offense is an effective way to silence people saying things people don’t like, but it’s a non sequitur. It is not disrespectful to note that a policy or belief has consequences. Some will claim that it is, but this is evasion. The issue is whether we look the other way. Of course we should watch our tone, but silence is not compatible with just any values. We are a gentle, but angry people.
Dawkins worries about American politics. When so many Americans reject evolution, it’s hard for any candidate who is simultaneously intelligent, informed and honest to get elected.
The subway rule: If you see something, say something. We might be wrong, but it would be further wrong to stay quiet out of fear that we might be wrong. But we’re tribal and reason is slave to the passions. When only a few people point something out, even if it’s correct, it can be ignored. And when billions say something, even if it’s nonsense, it can’t be ignored. I’ve found meaning and purpose in speaking up when things don’t fit, and not just in religious matters. In an age of BS the bad ideas blend right in. We’re smarter and stronger together, but only when we share what we see. I love being a part of this fellowship, full of people who are working for social justice, which involves speaking our truth. We know some things for sure, and that’s not our fault.
Recent Comments