King Sunday

January 14, 2007

Rev Amy DeBeck

Each year our congregations gather at General Assembly to vote on issues that will affect and direct our association, we gather to worship together, to attend workshops, to feel, for a few days, mighty in numbers. One of the high points of every General Assembly is hearing the Ware Lecture, and discovering who the Ware lecturer is. When Rev. Dr. King spoke at the UUA General Assembly in 1966, he encouraged we Unitarian Universalists to be people of faith who stand up for justice. His keynote address was in Hollywood, FL, and it was called “Don’t Sleep Through the Revolution.” He spun the story of Rip Van Winkle, noting that the most amazing thing about the folk tale is not that the man slept for 20 years, but that he slept right through the American Revolution. He fell asleep in a British Colony and awoke in a free nation. Today I would like to quote from and comment on points of the Ware Lecture by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King as a call to action for us, as we embark on a new vision of social action and justice for this congregation. Soon we at UUCL will be gathering together to decide what we as a body will support. Social action in our church is too big and too important to do by a committee, and although we as individuals have passions, when we work toward selected goals as a corporate body, we can achieve so much more. May we gain some insights this morning about Dr. King’s vision for Unitarian Universalists some 40 years ago.

“Certainly the church has a great responsibility because when the church is true to its nature, it stands as a moral guardian of the community and of society. It has always been the role of the church to broaden horizons, to challenge the status quo, and to question and break mores if necessary. I'm sure that we all agree that the church has a major role to play in this period of social change.  I would like to suggest some of the things that the church must continually do in order to remain awake through this revolution. First, we are challenged to instill within the people of our congregations a world perspective. The world in which we live is geographically one.”

With prophetic insight, King foretold global warming, global economy, the next wave of immigration, and the sense of closeness wrought by internet and digital technology. Instilling in this congregation a sense that the world is one is a simple task in most respects and yet still challenging. When we speak of global perspective, we mean on every level.

The consumerism that has engorged America, bilking other nations out of basic human rights so that we may have our lifestyles, is a travesty and we know it. We are a small group, but we are not insignificant. Individually and together we can make a difference in seeking justice locally and globally. Our congregation is a beacon of free religion, this sanctuary is not hidden in the woods waiting for a better day, but a refuge for people looking to save our world. Here, in this house, we are not afraid. We are not afraid to say radical things like we believe that unless we change our lifestyle global warming will kill millions of people and altar the world our children inherit. We can, as a corporate body, not just as individuals or committees, but as a congregation, take on the tasks of education and change in our community. We are not afraid to speak out against torture, even when our own government is the guilty party, because we can challenge the status quo and put pressure on people to examine their sense of humanity and decency. We can do this even though decades of celebrating our individuality has not really helped us pull together. Soon, when this congregation votes to focus energies on specific social action issues so that we may affect positive change, let us remember that 40 years ago Dr. King believed we could act as a corporate body when he said, “I'm sure that we all agree that the church has a major role to play in this period of social change.” We can all agree on affecting change. Every period is one of social change if one is not sleeping through the revolution. We are ready to be the moral guardians of our society and to challenge the status quo—our seventh principle affirms that we are part of an interconnected web, a world perspective, and Dr. King’s legacy for us is to rise to the occasion as so many generations of UU’s have before us.

“Secondly, it is necessary for the church to reaffirm over and over again the essential immorality of racial segregation. Any church which affirms the morality of segregation is sleeping through the revolution. We must make it clear that segregation, whether it's in the public schools, in housing, or in recreational facilities, or in the church itself, is morally wrong and sinful. It is not only sociologically untenable, or politically unsound, or merely economically unwise, it is morally wrong and sinful.”

To some, it may seem that desegregation has been legally accomplished. We herald Martin Luther King Jr and the civil rights movement of the 1960’s as having been successful at ending racial segregation. Yet we only need to move through one normal day in this country, one day in Loudoun County, to know that the dream is far from realized.

With minutemen in Herndon, VA targeting Hispanic migrant workers, Muslims who worship at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, or ADAMS Center, suffering hate crimes, with racial profiling on the roads of the state of Virginia, it is clear that we are still a racially segregated society. Dr. King said that any church who affirms the morality of segregation is sleeping through the revolution. My friends, this is a subject we Unitarian Universalists struggle with separately and together. While we don’t espouse to affirm the morality of segregation, as a denomination we are still vastly white although we do anti-oppression, anti-racism work. An initiative introduced some years back attempted to begin moving congregations through the work of undoing racism. The program called Journey Toward Wholeness was successful in many respects in waking us up to institutional and personal racism but in other ways was dismissed as tokenism, even by some of our own leaders who are of color. I confess that I have not gone through the training to lead congregations through the process, and I am interested in this work. If our congregation should decide to take on anti-racism work as a priority I will take up the call as your leader. It is hard to understand institutional racism because, individually we are not racist people. Yet, in our post-modern culture, we must move through many steps before we can attempt to claim that we are remaining awake in the racial revolution, let alone winning the fight. First we must understand, claim, and engage with others as we face our personal feelings about how we participate knowingly or not in institutional racism as we also turn inward to discover how racism has affected our lives. I believe that the good doctor is right. You believe that the good doctor is right. Racial segregation is, in his words, “socially untenable, politically unsound, economically unwise, and morally wrong and sinful.” To our liberal minds, sin means missing the mark, and I believe that we are still sinful as a nation in this regard—we are still a racially segregated land, perhaps even more so as the struggle is not merely between blacks and whites anymore but all people of color, and our new Americans, our immigrants. May we reflect on his first point, that “the world in which we live is geographically one.”

“There is another thing that the church must do to remain awake. I thing it is necessary to refute the idea that there are superior and inferior races. We must get rid of the notion once and for all that there are superior and inferior races. It is out of this notion that the whole doctrine of white supremacy came into being, and the church must take a stand through religious education and other channels to direct the popular mind at this point, for there are some people who still believe this strange doctrine.

Now, fortunately, I'm sure you don't have any Unitarian Universalists who believe this but I think some of my Baptist brothers around the South believe it and I would like to get you to help me out with some of my brothers. It's a strange notion that has made for a great deal of strife and suffering.”

Similar to racial segregation is the idea of racial inferiority. Now, to some degree, except for some radical hold-outs, this concept really has left the mainstream of the US, at least overtly. But the idea that there are specific differences between people based on their race is still alive, and we must do what we can to identify these examples when confronted with them, and to use adult and children’s religious education to refute this idea. If we think about economic or class divides as being in the same vein as those old beliefs about racial inferiority, then we see that the problem still exists. In urban areas, in inner city projects, it is still mostly people of color, recent immigrants, and other non-whites who occupy substandard housing, work for poverty wages, and have no health care. For most white Americans, out of sight is out of mind and so in these “bad neighborhoods” the problems of extreme poverty lead to desperation and hopelessness which exacerbate the crime rates and continue to feed the ideas of white superiority but in a more sanitized, politically correct way. The only way to really confront race issues is to confront the conditions and causes of poverty and classism. Dr. King’s words are a bit outdated, thankfully, but the premise behind them —justice for all races in areas of housing, schools, and health care—can be our mission if we choose to make them priorities.

“The next thing that the church must do to remain awake through this revolution is to move out into the arena of social action. It is not enough for the church to work in the ideological realm, and to clear up misguided ideas. To remain awake through this social revolution, the church must engage in strong action programs to get rid of the last vestiges of segregation and discrimination. It is necessary to get rid of one or two myths if we're really going to engage in this kind of action program. One is the notion that legislation is not effective in bringing about the changes that we need in human relations. This argument says that you've got to change the heart in order to solve the problem; that you can't change the heart through legislation. They would say you've got to do that through religion and education. Well, there's some truth in this. Before we can solve these problems men and women must rise to the majestic heights of being obedient to the unenforceable. I would be the first to say this.

If we are to have a truly integrated society, white persons and Negro persons and members of all groups must live together, not merely because the law says it but because it's natural and because it's right. But that does not make legislation less important. It may be true that you can't legislate integration but you can legislate desegregation. It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless. The law cannot make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important also. And so while the law may not change the hearts of men, it does change the habits of men. So it is necessary for the church to support strong, meaningful civil rights legislation.”

This cornerstone of his ministry—social justice and putting faith into action—is somewhat bittersweet for me. In our UU circles we tend to mean in the 21^st century, when we say civil rights, those relating to sexual orientation. And this cause lead me into ministry. Yet, King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, and their children, have not endorsed any of these campaigns. It reminds me of another time in history when one of my role models, Lydia Maria Child, was scorned by feminists of her time because she chose to focus her energies on winning the freedom to vote for the black man before fighting for the freedom to vote for any women. Her reasoning was that inequality surely existed between the sexes, and women were treated as second-class citizens in most areas of government, education, legal rights, and so on, but nobody believed that women were subhuman. She argued with her suffragette sisters that for the black man to be denied a basic right of another man was to hold him in regard as less than human. She saw the fight for civil rights and voting laws as a progression, that once the black man was recognized, then she would move on to the next step, which is what she did. I think of this woman, Mrs. Child, and of the King family whenever I encounter somebody who does not understand why recognizing one’s sexual orientation is not just a private sexual matter, but one requiring legislation. People who spend their lives fighting for survival in a public arena know that broad reform comes very slowly, and they pick their battles. Nobody should be tortured anywhere. No family should be told that they are not a legal family. No woman, child, or man anywhere should be bought or sold. Injustice anywhere, to anyone --oppression in any form--is a threat to everyone and a roadblock to real peace. It is my belief that good people who want to fight oppression can sometimes be at odds with each other because our immediate concerns are different. Silence on the part of the King family regarding civil rights for all families is not their priority while racial issues still abound. This is the peace I have made with people whose priorities differ from my own, and this is the approach I urge us to take as we embark on a more unified approach to social action. How many times have we heard things like, I can’t believe you’re spending all this time working on this or that campaign when people are being abused in this or that nation? While we all do good work, advocating on behalf of specific oppressed populations are just naturally going to appeal to different people. So when we meet somebody, maybe even here at church, who can’t put their energy into what we hold dear, thank them for choosing the battle you did not, and carry on side by side. “To remain awake through this social revolution, the church must engage in strong action programs to get rid of the last vestiges of segregation and discrimination.” Sometimes we will fight together, and sometimes we will choose a passion, but do not fail to recognize that we are still fighting for justice everywhere, for everyone.

In Conclusion:

“I talk a great deal about the need for a kind of divine discontent. And I always mention that there are certain technical words within every science which become stereotypes and cliches. Modern psychology has a word that has become common - it is the word maladjusted. We read a great deal about it. It is a ringing cry of modern child psychology; and certainly we all want to live the well adjusted and avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities. But I must say to you this evening, my friends, there are some things in our nation and in our world to which I'm proud to be maladjusted. And I call upon you to be maladjusted and all people of good will to be maladjusted to these things until the good society is realized. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry .I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few, and leave millions of people perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of prosperity. I must honestly say, however much criticism it brings, that I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, and to the self-defeating effects of physical violence……Yes, I must confess that I believe firmly that our world is in dire need of a new organization – the International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment. Men and Women as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day, cried out in words that echo across the centuries - "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." As maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln, who had the vision to see that this nation could not survive half slave and half free.

As maladjusted as Thomas Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery, cried in words lifted to cosmic proportions - "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." As maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth, who could say to the men and women of his day “he who lives by the sword will perish by the sword.” Through such maladjustment we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man, into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.”

May we all remain maladjusted to injustice and may we remember the legacy of this great man, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Blessed be and amen.