as preached at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston on November 10, 2024
The “music is the message,” the funk band Kool and the Gang once told us. This morning, I have little to say that is not covered someplace in our hymns and choral anthems.
There’s a little bit of “Love will guide us,” a piece of “There’s a road, we must travel, / There’s a promise we must make,” there’s more than a smidge of “Even though I walk through a dark and dreary land / There’s nothing that can shake me,” but mostly it is:
Sometimes in our lives
we all have pain,
we all have sorrow,
But if we are wise
we know that there’s
always tomorrow.
Lean on me
when you’re not strong
and I’ll be your friend,
I’ll help you carry on.
For it won’t be long
‘til I’m gonna’ need
somebody to lean on.
Lean on me, it is good to here. I am grateful that you are here. And I am grateful to have the opportunity to be here with you.
These are hard times. In such moments, we need community. We need the simple reminder that we are not alone. We do not need to go through this alone. Together, we can grieve. Together, we can mourn. I can lean on you. You can lean on me. We can lean on each other.
Together, we can organize. Together, we can remind each other of the simple truth: we are far more powerful when we work together than when we are alone. It is like Marge Piercy told us:
… two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon…
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization…
A dozen make a demonstration.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter…
It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
its starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.
A hundred fills a hall.
A hundred fills a hall. These are hard times. I suspect that if you are joining us today, in-person or online, then you found Tuesday’s events to be, at the very least, disappointing.
I experienced them as shattering. They represent the nationalization of what I have taken to call the politics of cruelty. They all but ensure that the coming years will unfold as part of what the philosopher John Clark has named “the Necrocene, ‘the new era of death.’”
These are hard truths to accept. It has only been within the last few hours that I have been able to start to face them. I turned off the news for most of the week. It was not until this morning that I found myself able to do much more than skim the headlines. And, if I am honest, my ability to do that came from the reality that I had to preach this morning.
We are facing the nationalization of the politics of cruelty. Our tradition teaches that our response must be to craft what I could call a politics of care. The philosopher John Clark defines these as “based on the recognition of the needs of all sentient beings.” The Indian Unitarian theologian Renewlet Nongbri describes them as working “for the creation on earth of that beloved community in which each human being … [has] the full opportunity to reach the highest of which … [they are] capable.”
The work of creating community is at the core of the politics of care. I quoted Grace Lee Boggs on this point a couple of weeks back. She reminded us that, “Building community is to the collective as spiritual practice is to the individual.” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez had much the same advice for us this past week when she said that our task right now is “community building.” We have break down “the isolation” that so many people are experiencing right now–from the aftermath of COVID, from living in an increasingly unequal and atomized capitalist economic system, from the toxic social media landscape, from processing the shock of what just happened.
That is what we do here at First Unitarian Universalist, build community. It is the basis for a politics of care that we can be part of crafting right here, in our sanctuary and among each other. It is why something like ninety of you came to our campus on Wednesday for either coffee and fellowship or for our evening vigil. It the reason that so many of you turned out for our auction last night. The event was big enough that we had to put out extra tables. We ran out of some of the food. And most importantly, we raised a lot of money. By my count we hit at least $50,000. When the final tally is in the number might even be North of $55,000. Either way, we significantly beat our goal of $45,000.
Can we celebrate that for a moment? I would like to invite anyone from the auction team who is present to stand up. Let us give them a big hand. And maybe even a “Hallelujah?”
I am not going to promise you that we are going to be alright. But I can tell you that we are going to go all in on building community, crafting a politics of care, in the face of what is to come.
What is to come, the nationalization of the politics of cruelty, unfortunately, I need to turn to the current events portion of our sermon. This sermon is part of our “Future Visions, Future Selves” series. In it we are exploring three aspects of the future–societal, personal, and planetary–from a variety of religious perspectives. Together, we are asking questions like: “What does the future hold? How might we prepare for it?”
What does the future hold? How might we prepare for it? The former, and now future, President’s allies have been admitting, in their words, “that yeah actually Project 2025 is the agenda.”
Project 2025, it is a laundry list of reactionary political desires. It means assaults on labor rights, women’s rights, GLBTQ rights, well, really the rights of just about everyone who is not a cisgendered straight White evangelical Christian male. It represents a deep commitment to living into the sort of politics of cruelty that will ensure that the twenty-first century and beyond are the Necrocene, the new era of death. It pledges that the federal government will marshal its resources in such a way that humanity, the planet, and all known being are put on a path of warming oceans, fiercer storms, and decreasing biodiversity.
That is what the future holds. How might we prepare for it? Jolie, can we get another chorus from “Lean on Me:”
Lean on me
when you’re not strong
and I’ll be your friend,
I’ll help you carry on
For it won’t be long
‘til I’m gonna’ need somebody
to lean on.
What the future holds, like I said, I experienced Tuesday’s events as shattering. You can listen to Democracy Now, read Jacobin, the Guardian, or the New York Review of Books, if you want a more detailed analysis of what is to come. I am going to turn now to the question of how we might prepare.
I am going to do so, in this order, as a scholar of populism, a theologian, and a pastor. The point I am going to land on in each of these final sermon segments is the same. We need to create a politics of care as a counter to the politics of cruelty. We need to build community but not just any community. We need craft the kind of community we talk about in our mission statement: “multicultural, multigenerational, and multiracial.” Such a community must be committed to widening “love’s circle by honoring the inherent worth and dignity of all, advancing justice and religious pluralism, and inspiring an ever-deepening spirituality.”
I sometimes summarize our tradition a commitment to love and reason. So far this morning, I have been leaning into love—the power of community. Now, I want to shift to the clarifying force of reason for a while. This might get uncomfortable. But if we are going to figure out how to move forward, we need to soberly understand what is going on.
I have been studying populist movements for more than a decade. I have two books about populism and religion coming out within the next eighteen months. I have published and lectured widely on the subject.
One of my central arguments is that progressives are fundamentally ill-equipped to address populist movements. I am being technical about the word progressive here. Progressivism is a state centered reform project. That is a fancy way of saying that progressive politics hinge upon legal reforms. Change this law, change that law, and all can be made right with the world.
Populists experience the world differently. Populist politics focus on the question of identity. They tend to a deep need that each of us has. We all need to answer the questions: “Who am I?” “To which group do I belong?”
In the United States, populism derives from a simple query left unanswered in the first sentence of the nation’s Constitution. I anticipate that you can say it with me, “We the People of the United States.” But who is “We the People”?
The Constitution is famously ambiguous on this point. In its original form it made several references to slavery, including the infamous three-fifths clause, but left the actual matter of who comprises the people to the states.
In the country’s earliest years, the matter was far from settled. Women were granted the right to vote in New Jersey state elections in 1776. They lost that right in 1806. Free Black men voted in Tennessee as late as 1834.
I share these historical facts as a reminder that the question of who a citizen of the United States is, who belongs here, has been contested since the nation’s inception. In the election cycle the former, and now future, President had an answer to that query that a majority of voters found compelling. He believes, as one of his closest advisors has put it, “America is for Americans and Americans only.”
It is a nonsensical statement that I will attempt to guide us through later. But one of the shattering points about it is this, more voters found this exclusionary, constricting, and violently dangerous of the people to be compelling than the one put forth by the Vice President.
When asked in exit polls why they preferred the former President to the Vice President, most voters responded, “the economy.” By this, they meant, the journalist Doug Henwood has noted, “inflation.” He’s pointed out that voters who “said inflation caused them ‘severe hardship’ … went for … [the former President] by 50 points.” Those that said inflation “caused them ‘moderate hardship’ went for … [the former President] by 6 points.” Together these two groups comprise three quarters of the electorate. It is only those who “said it caused them no hardship at all,” a scant quarter of voters, who “went for … [the Vice President] by 57 points.”
For the last four years, the Vice President’s party has often denied that inflation has been a significant problem for most people. They have clearly felt that her party, despite its rhetorical flourishes, is not the party for those experiencing economic anxiety. Higher rents, higher food prices, have not been sufficiently met by higher wages. In many of her campaign choices she communicated that she was interested in aligning herself with people who could easily be labelled the elite. She included former leaders from the Republican Party. She drew economic policies from billionaires and touted that the economic establishment thought they were a safer bet for staying the course. She put forth plans focused on the middle rather than the working classes. So, the majority of voters picked someone who pals around with white supremacists, who is an aspiring dictator, because they trusted that his vision of the people would better meet their needs.
Here we return to “America is for Americans and Americans only.” In the coming years our principal task as a religious community will be to offer a vision for our community that is more compelling. America is for Americans and Americans only is about narrowing the circle of love. We have committed to widening it.
The narrow vision has been clearly articulated by the former President’s most ardent supporters. They have put forth vile slogans like “Your body, my choice.” They have called the future President “Daddy” and referred to the country as a girl who needs a spanking. In making these statements they have clarified that more than anything their vision of community is one in which women are subservient to men. This gendered subservience, they have communicated, is supposedly the path towards economic prosperity.
In the last years, the rise of inflation, and the decline in purchasing power from wages, has been accompanied by the decline of the economic status of men without a college education. Forty years ago, White men without a college education made more money on average than other workers. Forty years ago, there was significantly less economic inequality than there is today. It was easier to buy a home. It was easier to buy groceries. It was easier to send your children to college. A lot of families could survive on a single income.
In the face of this shift, a lot of voters found the gendered vision at the core of white supremacy, and lifted up by the former President, to be appealing. We need to be clear. The subjugation of women is central to white supremacy. The earliest colonialist laws establishing slavery were oriented around gender. Freedom followed the status of the mother. A Black woman whose body was controlled by a White man gave birth to unfree children. A White woman whose body was controlled by a White man gave birth to free children. In both instances, women did not have full bodily autonomy, which is another way to say citizenship. They were subject to the petty dictatorships of plantation owners and husbands.
The control of women has continued to be the central animating concern of white supremacy until the contemporary moment. We have words from the future President’s allies. A bridge statement might be found in the earliest documents of the second Ku Klux Klan, whose reign of terror troubled Texas and the country in the 1920s. If you read some of their earliest pamphlets, a practice I absolutely do not recommend, you will find statements indicating the prevention of mixing “the blood of our government and civilization” with that of “alien races” as their central concern. They placed “keeping [women] secure from pollution from inferior blood” as a primary objective.
That ties into the fear of immigrants. They have always been cast as a source of pollution for the women that white supremacists seek to control. “America for Americans and Americans” only is a stand-in for a society controlled by White men where the borders of the nation and the family as fiercely patrolled. It is a promise to ensure that men–particularly White men–are placed back on top.
It is hard to blame many of the former President’s supporters for embracing this vision. When it was previously celebrated things were better for a lot of them. The politics of cruelty is partially based in a sense that things can only get better for some of us. Keeping down the other, women, immigrants, and Black people, is viewed as necessary for success.
In such a situation, and here we get to the theological, our task is clear. We need a vision of community that does not just tend to a shallow pluralism. It cannot be the window dressing of the United Colors of Benetton. It must include a sharp attention to people’s material needs. It must demonstrate that everyone from transgender youth to Black women professionals to undocumented immigrants to White men without a college education will be better off, be included, in the Beloved Community, in the “multicultural, multigenerational, and multiracial” society that we are seeking to build. It has to provide a positive material alternative to the society that the former President is committed to constructing.
The Beloved Community is the human family whole and reconciled. The Beloved Community is the great family of all souls of which we are a part. The Beloved Community is the basis for the politics of care. It is rooted in a recognition of the needs of all sentient beings. It contains the understanding that even in periods of national or international crisis, most relationships and most politics, remain interpersonal and local.
It promises that we are better off together than we are by ourselves. This is no empty promise. When we build community, we are more capable of faring the world’s storms. If you have been part of First Unitarian Universalist for a while, I suspect you know this. I am consistently impressed by the ways in which members take care of each other. So often when Scott or I go and visit members who are sick, in the hospital, or at the end of life we find that other members of the congregation are already there. You do not leave each other to suffer or struggle alone. In times of trial, you tend to each other’s needs.
There is an economic truth to this reality. Historically, people who have joined churches or religious communities have experienced a growth of about 10% in their lifetime earnings. Here at First Unitarian Universalist, you tutor each other through school. You mentor each other. You give each other leads on jobs. You create a caring network to help sustain each other through the hard times and the good.
That is the Beloved Community. And our task is to demonstrate through our actions, through our efforts of inclusion, that our inclusive vision, is the one in which everyone will prosper.
All of this might seem like a lot. So finally, I turn to the pastoral. It is not going to be easy. But if you are convinced, as I am, that building the Beloved Community is the forth, forward in these hard times, there are three concrete steps that you can take, today, to help make it so.
First, come up with a clear answer to the question of why belonging to a congregation that contains the vision of the Beloved Community makes your life better. Why is it better to be part of community that is committed to building a multicultural, multigenerational, and multiracial than one that is not? Put more simply, why is your life better for being part of First Unitarian Universalist?
I want to give you a moment to think about that. And then I am going to give a moment to share with your neighbor. Jolie will call us back together with song. Why is my life better for being part of First Unitarian Universalist?
Second concrete step, your answer is your good news about the Beloved Community. Go find someone to share it with. Tell them why your life is better for being a part of First Unitarian Universalist. And then invite them to come to church with you. We are stronger together than we are apart. The more people who we can bring into our community the more powerful it will become.
Third concrete step, in the coming weeks I suspect we are going to have a lot of visitors. Be friendly to them. After the service today, whether this is your first Sunday here or your five hundredth, go up to someone you do not know. Ask them about the good news that First Unitarian Universalist has for them. Share with them yours. I suspect that you will find comfort in each other. I anticipate that you will feel a little bit less alone. I believe that you will build community.
It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
its starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.
A hundred fills a hall.
Building community, at the end here, we return to the music is the message. As closing to the sermon rather than a prayer or an Amen, we are going to sing the third verse of “Lean on Mean.” Then Chelsea’s going to give us a musical meditation and we will move right into the final hymn. The music is the message, “Lean on Me.”
