Justice Sunday--April 6, 2008--Peggy Jenkins
The UUCP is one of many congregations participating in "Justice Sunday" in partnership with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. Our church is a member of the UUSC, which is an organization dedicated to advancing human rights and social justice, and which provides resources to local congregations like ours. This year, Justice Sunday calls for consideration about war, poverty, and our nations priorities. The UUSC provided us with a sermon prepared by Carmen Emerson, a divinity student who works for the organization. I have taken excerpts from her sermon, and from the writing of Doctor Martin Luther King, who died 40 years ago this past Friday.
One year before Dr. King's death in Memphis, he gave a speech at the Riverside Church in New York City entitled "Beyond Vietnam, a Time to Break the Silence." King said of Vietnam "Somehow this madness must cease. . . . . I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken... The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours."
The five years before the Riverside Speech had been busy ones for King. In 1963 he was jailed in Birmingham Alabama, and later that year he delivered his "I Have a Dream" Speech in Washington, D.C. In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel peace prize. He witnessed the signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. In 1965, at Howard University, Dr. King gave his first speech against the War.
We often think of the risks Martin Luther King took in the violence and unrest of the civil rights movement, but in many ways his opposition to the war was an even greater risk. He alienated many political allies and friends. Clayborne Carson, a King historian at Stanford University, explains: "The white liberals had kind of abandoned him because of his Vietnam speech. [President Lyndon B.] Johnson thought he had gone off the deep end. And most black people in the civil rights movement thought he had gone off the deep end." At Riverside Doctor King acknowledged:
"Many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path--Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people? Such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling."
According to Clayborne, King was politically isolated in the final years of his life. King acknowledged this alienation when he spoke at Riverside. He said, "Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony."
It should be said, though, that Dr. King's speech at Riverside was not an occasion for despair. In fact, he was celebrating, because he had found a community of faith opposed to the War. He was addressing a group known as "Clergy and Laymen concerned about Vietnam." The Group was formed in October 1965, and Doctor King was one of its few black members. It must be said that the Group served Doctor King's pragmatic interests: he had well-founded concerns that he would be smeared as a communist for opposing the war in Vietnam, and his association with the Clergy and Laymen Group helped him place his views within the broader religious opposition to the war. But the "Clergy and Laymen" group served Doctor King's spiritual interests as well. He said:
"We must rejoice--for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance."
Doctor King also had a sustaining spiritual kinship with the Unitarian Universalists. In 1966 he addressed the UU General Assembly in Hollywood Florida. He said:
"There are those wonderful moments in life when you speak before a group that is so near and dear to you that you don't feel like you have to engage in the art of persuasion. You know that you are with friends. I can assure you that I feel that way tonight."
Of course, Doctor King's address was about segregation and civil rights; had he addressed the UU general assembly about Vietnam in 1966 he would not have found uniform acceptance for his views. Dana McLean Greevy, President of the UU Association in the mid-sixties, was a member Clergy and Laymen concerned about Vietnam. But throughout America, the war divided UU congregations. People left the church, both out of a feeling that the increasingly anti-war church did not support their views, and because they felt the church was becoming more of a political institution than a religious one. Even within the our chuch there was division and conflict over the war.
Even today, developing a single UU position on war and conflict is a daunting, if not impossible task. Right now our church and others have been asked to consider this question:
I am sure that, among you sitting here today, there are a range of opinions on this issue. And there are people like me who are not even prepared to formulate an opinion. I would need time to sit quietly, to unpack all the thoughts and feelings that keep me from embracing that statement whole-heartedly. I need to examine my misgivings: hold them up in the light, and turn them around so I can see them from all sides. I have to find a way to articulate and express my concerns, and to find a place for them in the UU discussion.
I's not easy. But it's what Unitarian Universalists have been called upon to do over the next couple years. These discussions will lead up to a statement of conscience about just war and pacifism for consideration by the 2010 General Assembly. In the fall our church will engage in conversations about war, just war, just peace and pacifism. I hope you will take part.
Talking about war and conflict seems abstract and academic, for those of us who don't control the bombs or guns and who don't witness the carnage first hand. But it's not, because the resources we waste on bombs and guns prevent us from providing justice and opportunity at home. Doctor Martin Luther King recognized this in his speech at Riverside in 1967. He explained there was a very obvious--an inverse correlation--between war in Vietnam and the war on poverty in America. He said,
"A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor--both black and white--through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such."
Doctor King's words are heartbreakingly true today. Forty years later, exchange the war in Vietnam for the war in Iraq and consider the socioeconomic status of those in the Gulf Coast most hurt by Hurricaine Katrina: consider the state of health care, education, affordable housing and civil liberties in our nation, and consider Doctor King's words: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
In the five years since President George W. Bush invaded Iraq, the U.S. has spent or committed $600 billion on and to the war. Can you imagine what Dr. King could have done with $600 billion? Can you imagine what half that amount would have done to renew the gulf coast? Instead, on the gulf coast, the poorest people in the world's wealthiest nation struggle to complete a recovery effort subjugated to the same disparities of race and class that called King to act over 40 years ago. Just as Dr. King observed, it is the poor who are most grievously injured by our nation's misplaced priorities.
Affordable housing in New Orleans is non-existent, rents have increased by as much as 200 percent; and only one of seven general hospitals in New Orleans is operating at pre-storm levels. Mental health problems and post-traumatic stress are rising, as are suicide rates, but funding and resources for mental health continue to be reduced.
The poorest of the poor continue to pay the highest price. Taxpayers in Louisiana and Mississippi will be asked to pay $1.8 billion, for proposed Iraq war spending in the 2008. Again, those are funds that could have made an immediate and lasting difference to post-Katrina recovery efforts. That is money taken away from education, health care, and housing for those in dire need in the Gulf Coast Region and throughout the United States.
In the history, facts and figures considered today, certain questions persist: Why do we kill other people? Why do we take care of some while neglecting others? When faced with the overwhelming needs of this nation and of the world, are the odds too great? Have we rationed our moral outrage to the point of apathy? Coming to terms with those questions and that doubt is a necessary step on the road to change. In the words of Martin Luther King,
"Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on."
We are most fortunate to be in a community where we can work together to find our truth and imprint it upon our world. As people of a theologically and politically diverse faith, it is our highest calling to hold each other up through the work of justice and peacemaking. We need not fear unanswerable questions. We have covenanted to accompany one another in a search for truth and meaning, and questioning is a sacrament to us. We need not surrender to apathy or be mesmerized by uncertainty. We are active agents in our own salvation. We have ourselves; we have each other; and we have a social justice legacy that it is in our bones.
In many ways, the hardest thing we have to do is make the choice to act. To save our singular country from the threat of spiritual death. And to seize the moment now. In the words of Doctor Martin Luther King:
"Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter--but beautiful--struggle for a new world. . . . Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? . . . . . Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with [our] yearnings, of commitment to the cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history."
One year before Dr. King's death in Memphis, he gave a speech at the Riverside Church in New York City entitled "Beyond Vietnam, a Time to Break the Silence." King said of Vietnam "Somehow this madness must cease. . . . . I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken... The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours."
The five years before the Riverside Speech had been busy ones for King. In 1963 he was jailed in Birmingham Alabama, and later that year he delivered his "I Have a Dream" Speech in Washington, D.C. In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel peace prize. He witnessed the signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. In 1965, at Howard University, Dr. King gave his first speech against the War.
We often think of the risks Martin Luther King took in the violence and unrest of the civil rights movement, but in many ways his opposition to the war was an even greater risk. He alienated many political allies and friends. Clayborne Carson, a King historian at Stanford University, explains: "The white liberals had kind of abandoned him because of his Vietnam speech. [President Lyndon B.] Johnson thought he had gone off the deep end. And most black people in the civil rights movement thought he had gone off the deep end." At Riverside Doctor King acknowledged:
"Many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path--Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people? Such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling."
According to Clayborne, King was politically isolated in the final years of his life. King acknowledged this alienation when he spoke at Riverside. He said, "Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony."
It should be said, though, that Dr. King's speech at Riverside was not an occasion for despair. In fact, he was celebrating, because he had found a community of faith opposed to the War. He was addressing a group known as "Clergy and Laymen concerned about Vietnam." The Group was formed in October 1965, and Doctor King was one of its few black members. It must be said that the Group served Doctor King's pragmatic interests: he had well-founded concerns that he would be smeared as a communist for opposing the war in Vietnam, and his association with the Clergy and Laymen Group helped him place his views within the broader religious opposition to the war. But the "Clergy and Laymen" group served Doctor King's spiritual interests as well. He said:
"We must rejoice--for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance."
Doctor King also had a sustaining spiritual kinship with the Unitarian Universalists. In 1966 he addressed the UU General Assembly in Hollywood Florida. He said:
"There are those wonderful moments in life when you speak before a group that is so near and dear to you that you don't feel like you have to engage in the art of persuasion. You know that you are with friends. I can assure you that I feel that way tonight."
Of course, Doctor King's address was about segregation and civil rights; had he addressed the UU general assembly about Vietnam in 1966 he would not have found uniform acceptance for his views. Dana McLean Greevy, President of the UU Association in the mid-sixties, was a member Clergy and Laymen concerned about Vietnam. But throughout America, the war divided UU congregations. People left the church, both out of a feeling that the increasingly anti-war church did not support their views, and because they felt the church was becoming more of a political institution than a religious one. Even within the our chuch there was division and conflict over the war.
Even today, developing a single UU position on war and conflict is a daunting, if not impossible task. Right now our church and others have been asked to consider this question:
Should the Unitarian Universalist Association reject the use of any and all kinds of violence and war to resolve disputes between people and nations and adopt a principle of seeking just peace through non-violent means?
I am sure that, among you sitting here today, there are a range of opinions on this issue. And there are people like me who are not even prepared to formulate an opinion. I would need time to sit quietly, to unpack all the thoughts and feelings that keep me from embracing that statement whole-heartedly. I need to examine my misgivings: hold them up in the light, and turn them around so I can see them from all sides. I have to find a way to articulate and express my concerns, and to find a place for them in the UU discussion.
I's not easy. But it's what Unitarian Universalists have been called upon to do over the next couple years. These discussions will lead up to a statement of conscience about just war and pacifism for consideration by the 2010 General Assembly. In the fall our church will engage in conversations about war, just war, just peace and pacifism. I hope you will take part.
Talking about war and conflict seems abstract and academic, for those of us who don't control the bombs or guns and who don't witness the carnage first hand. But it's not, because the resources we waste on bombs and guns prevent us from providing justice and opportunity at home. Doctor Martin Luther King recognized this in his speech at Riverside in 1967. He explained there was a very obvious--an inverse correlation--between war in Vietnam and the war on poverty in America. He said,
"A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor--both black and white--through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such."
Doctor King's words are heartbreakingly true today. Forty years later, exchange the war in Vietnam for the war in Iraq and consider the socioeconomic status of those in the Gulf Coast most hurt by Hurricaine Katrina: consider the state of health care, education, affordable housing and civil liberties in our nation, and consider Doctor King's words: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
In the five years since President George W. Bush invaded Iraq, the U.S. has spent or committed $600 billion on and to the war. Can you imagine what Dr. King could have done with $600 billion? Can you imagine what half that amount would have done to renew the gulf coast? Instead, on the gulf coast, the poorest people in the world's wealthiest nation struggle to complete a recovery effort subjugated to the same disparities of race and class that called King to act over 40 years ago. Just as Dr. King observed, it is the poor who are most grievously injured by our nation's misplaced priorities.
Affordable housing in New Orleans is non-existent, rents have increased by as much as 200 percent; and only one of seven general hospitals in New Orleans is operating at pre-storm levels. Mental health problems and post-traumatic stress are rising, as are suicide rates, but funding and resources for mental health continue to be reduced.
The poorest of the poor continue to pay the highest price. Taxpayers in Louisiana and Mississippi will be asked to pay $1.8 billion, for proposed Iraq war spending in the 2008. Again, those are funds that could have made an immediate and lasting difference to post-Katrina recovery efforts. That is money taken away from education, health care, and housing for those in dire need in the Gulf Coast Region and throughout the United States.
In the history, facts and figures considered today, certain questions persist: Why do we kill other people? Why do we take care of some while neglecting others? When faced with the overwhelming needs of this nation and of the world, are the odds too great? Have we rationed our moral outrage to the point of apathy? Coming to terms with those questions and that doubt is a necessary step on the road to change. In the words of Martin Luther King,
"Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on."
We are most fortunate to be in a community where we can work together to find our truth and imprint it upon our world. As people of a theologically and politically diverse faith, it is our highest calling to hold each other up through the work of justice and peacemaking. We need not fear unanswerable questions. We have covenanted to accompany one another in a search for truth and meaning, and questioning is a sacrament to us. We need not surrender to apathy or be mesmerized by uncertainty. We are active agents in our own salvation. We have ourselves; we have each other; and we have a social justice legacy that it is in our bones.
In many ways, the hardest thing we have to do is make the choice to act. To save our singular country from the threat of spiritual death. And to seize the moment now. In the words of Doctor Martin Luther King:
"Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter--but beautiful--struggle for a new world. . . . Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? . . . . . Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with [our] yearnings, of commitment to the cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history."
Labels: Martin Luther King, social justice
posted by UUCP Sermons at 3:11 PM
