Philo gave us the scoop on a church getting investigated by the IRS for having an antiwar sermon where the minister, by total coincidence, having nothing to do with influencing thoughts on the upsoming elections, told the church what Jesus would have thought of the war that just happened to be a huge campaign issue.
I have to say that I find the general "Boy, if Jesus were alive today, he would totally agree with my political views" topic really tired, no matter which side is preaching it.
That said, I think the IRS should have many more blatant cases of politicking from the pulpit than this one. Heck, I could give them three or four that I've actually witnessed that were more blatant. Not going to, but just saying...
I prefer going one notch more careful than the IRS standard Derek cites in Philo's comments. I'd like to see a standard where we don't endorse/criticize candidates OR policies, but the moral stands beneath them. That seems firmly religion's territory. And if we don't change people's minds about the moral questions, killing one referendum or getting one candidate elected is just a band-aid over a deeper wound anyway.
In my church we just had a sermon on the evolution debate where our minister spent a good ten minutes telling us over and over how right we are to believe in evolution. (Before giving us the great insight that evolution and God's hand in creation are not at all incompatible, a point my mom made as convincingly and a hell of a lot more concisely when I was ten. But I'm getting off track...) We're all very certain that the church should stay out of science, even when a church thinks it knows what is best for science.
Is it so unreasonable to ask the church to do the same when it comes to politics?
Is there anyone here who can tell me with a straight face that listing off one candidate's policies and how much Jesus would have disliked them two days before an election has nothing to do with influencing votes?
Furthermore, if the church is so known for its liberal social activism that church members suspect this is political payback, why on Earth is telling its members that Jesus was a liberal necessary? They pretty obviously already believe it. Sermons that tell me how right I am mostly bore me.
CC
Ps. Yes, I would feel the same way if a conservative church preached about how the capital gains tax makes baby jesus cry for half an hour, then added a quick disclaimer that moral people can vote both ways. Of course, it sucks when conservatives do it too. Duh.
6 comments:
Apropos of this issue, I'll pass along this election sermon from last year which I liked very much:
Rev. Terry Burke, First Church of Jamaica Plain, Mass., 2004 Election Sermon
Tha capital gains tax makes baby Jesus jump for joy. "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's", he said.
I rather like the interpretation that Jesus was being sarcastic there, and that there was an unspoken implication there that nothing of the Jews was legitimately Caesar's. It fits well with all the other evidence that Jesus was persecuted primarily for encouraging disobedience to Rome - tax evasion being primary.
Chalicechick wrote:
-snip-
"I'd like to see a standard where we don't endorse/criticize candidates OR policies, but the moral stands beneath them. That seems firmly religion's territory. And if we don't change people's minds about the moral questions, killing one referendum or getting one candidate elected is just a band-aid over a deeper wound anyway."
Today in Texas, voters are deciding if same-sex marriage should be unconstitutional in the State of Texas. It's already not recognized under current Federal and Texas law. Here's the news link to the coverage:
Google News Coverage
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&q=texas+marriage
Here's what the Southwest District of the UUA is doing in response to this issue:
Oppose the Proposed Anti-Gay Amendent
http://www.swuuc.org/AntiGayAmendment.html
Here's the 1996 UUA General Assembly resolution that is relevant to this issue:
Support of the Right to Marry for Same-Sex Couples
http://www.uua.org/actions/immediate/96same-sex.html
Given that nearly every other religious group in the State of Texas is speaking out on this topic and many of these religious voices are vehemently anti-gay, can we afford to be silent? As one of the few denominations with the theological freedom to be welcoming to our bi, gay, lesbian, and transgender neighbors, how can we stay silent on this issue?
So talk about the freedom to love whoever you want. Talk about the tolerance required to let people live lifestyles different from your own. Talk about fairness.
UUs are, on the whole, not stupid. You don't have to spoon feed us the information.
We're talking about legislation so controversial that the KKK and several prominent minority groups are in agreement about denouncing it. It's not like people are coming to church without their minds being made up one way or another.
If we're not changing minds, what are we doing when we listen to political sermons?
Making ourselves feel better?
Chalicechick wrote:
-snip-
"So talk about the freedom to love whoever you want. Talk about the tolerance required to let people live lifestyles different from your own. Talk about fairness."
Actually, that's how I would approach this issue if I were in the pulpit.
However, "fairness" isn't just a theological concept. It's also a political concept as well. When our interim minister and our DRE mentioned this fairness issue in the pulpit, we had some very vocal individuals complain about "politics" in the pulpit.
And with the Louisiana vote even more lopsided than the Texas vote on same sex marriage (80% oppossing same sex marriage), we even had some members saying that any gay-friendly public statements from the congregation would be detrimental to congregational growth. This fear of potentially scaring off 80% of the congregation's potential members didn't pass the common sense logic test.
If we were to attract just 1% of the 20% of the electorate who voted to support same sex marriage in our community to our congregation, we would run out of worship space and it would be a 330% increase in membership.
Then Chalicechick wrote:
-snip-
"We're talking about legislation so controversial that the KKK and several prominent minority groups are in agreement about denouncing it. It's not like people are coming to church without their minds being made up one way or another."
According to the news reports I had read, the KKK and prominent minority groups were in agreement about supporting the proposed Texas Amendment. Here's a one news reference:
Texas Gay Marriage Ban May Pass With Support of Minorities, KKK
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aywzOFXEyFyw&refer=us
According to the news coverage, it was approved by Texas voters with a 76% approval rate.
Given that the Southwest District has only 10,000 Unitarian Universalists living in it, any fight to keep legal discrimination out of the Texas Constitution would be an uphill battle our faith communities.
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