5th Principle©
The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large
February 3, 2002
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Midland
Jane Thickstun, Celebrant

Today’s reading is from the meditation manual The Numbering of Our Days, by Anthony Friess Perrino. The selection is called "July 4^th," and was written for the occasion of Independence Day, but what he has to say about democracy seems relevant any day of the year.

Jean Jaures, the French political philosopher, once wrote, "Take from the altars of the past–the fire–not the ashes." That’s important to remember on the anniversary of our nation’s birth.

But just as fire can be dangerous, striving to preserve the flame of freedom carries the risk of being burned by inefficiency or worse: there’ll always be irresponsible extremists who will use their freedom to deceive people, and there will be the possibility of traitors hiding behind constitutional guarantees of rights.

These risks are inevitable in a free society; but it’s better to take the calculated risk than to accept the alternative certainty of tyranny, better to be singed by the fire of freedom, than suffocated in the ashes of authoritarianism, however benevolent.

The greater danger to our nation (than the risks of freedom) was illustrated in a Herblock cartoon depicting a man labeled "Hysteria" running up a ladder to the torch held by the Statue of Liberty. He is carrying a bucket of water and hollering "Fire!"

And if you have faith in people’s capacity ultimately to recognize and respond to truth, you will believe, as I do, that the only enduring political security is to be found in a society where a free exchange of opinions is maintained.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote, "In a democracy error by the majority may be tolerated as long as the minority is left free to correct it." This is the great genius and strength of a free society: its security rests upon the process, the maintenance of free expression, which can call attention to and correct its mistakes.

(p. 15)

Sermon

We’re up to the 5^th principle in this series on the principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association. By way of reminder, this statement of principles is not a creed, not anything anyone needs to sign on to. It is intended as a statement of what it is that Unitarian Universalists actually believe. The most recent statement was formulated in the mid-1980s. In this statement, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association covenant to affirm and promote the seven principles. If you’re new or don’t remember, you can look them up in the hymnal, on the page before the first hymn.

In the 5^th principle, we covenant to affirm and promote: "The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large." I used to wonder about this one – why a principle about democratic process? The right of conscience, sure, but democracy? That didn’t seem like a religious matter to me. It felt pretty mundane and boring, frankly. But then I went to a UU seminary, and I got a feel for how important this principle is.

Back in October I talked about our 1^st principle, the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Some of you may remember that I explained how Unitarians have traditionally lifted up humanity because they saw the divine principle in human beings, and that this has been a trademark of Unitarian thought. I also talked about the Universalists forming a denomination around the principle of universal salvation - the notion that everyone is saved and going to heaven, or in more modern lingo, everyone is equally good. The first principle describes our belief that the divine spark exists equally in everybody; that good and evil are potentials all of us have; that any of us could become like Jesus or Buddha or Confusius. The first principle is foundational to our faith.

That divine spark within - what is that if not conscience? Conscience is the part of us we trust to guide us right, to guide us to do right. As Unitarian Universalists, we trust the individual conscience above all other authority in determining religious truth, as I talked about last month. But we trust its judgement in all walks of life. It could be called the voice of reason, the voice of God, that "still, small voice" that can be hard to hear if we fill our lives with noise.

Not only do we trust our own conscience to guide us right, we believe that everyone’s conscience illuminates some truth, or piece of it. The "right of conscience" means that the individual conscience –the conscience of everybody– has a right to be heard. We believe in the right of conscience because we believe in the inherent worth and dignity of each person. And we believe in democratic process because we believe in the right of conscience.

Democratic process is a method of governance that lets all the voices be heard. Democracy is a form of government that treats all individuals as equals. Every vote counts the same, whether you are young or old, male or female, gay or straight, able or disabled, rich or poor. Every vote counts the same, whether Republican or Democrat, or Libertarian or Green. Every vote counts the same whether it affirms the status quo or some radical alternative. When everyone has a say, and the system is that the majority rules, people tend to be more accepting of the government, even when their candidate loses.

There has been a lot of discussion lately about governments in the Middle East, and how the ones friendliest to the U.S. are actually breeding grounds for terrorists. The regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt are so afraid of dissident voices that they repress them and don’t allow them to be heard. Whereas in countries with more democratic governments, those feelings get dispersed more because they’re allowed to be expressed. Of course, there’s the risk that those people–whoever it is you consider dangerous–could get into power. There is always that risk in an open society. But if there are voices that aren’t heard, they can get angry, and they can make trouble, as we have seen.

Our denomination and our nation were both founded on the principle of the right of conscience and the use of democratic process to protect that right. It is no coincidence that many of the founders of the United States of America were Unitarians and Universalists.

In a work called "The Limits of Our Identities," author Charles Blustein Ortman says, "The founding fathers of our county, many of whom were Unitarians and Universalists including Jefferson, the Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush, created a democracy. They created a form of government in which church and state were separated, but our republic was still built upon religious value. That religious value is one that recognizes the inherent worth and dignity of every person; it’s one that recognizes the intrinsic equality of all persons. Of course we have to admit that the identification of all persons, which was quite limited at the time of the Constitution, has since expanded and will continue to expand until it does mean all persons."

Even better than democracy at letting all the voices be heard is the model of consensus. Yet as my colleague Carol Huston says, "it has become clear, as liberal groups have tried to operate on consensus, that the search for consensus is a long and elusive process that may allow a determined 1% or 2% to hold the remaining 98% hostage to inactivity. A consensus methodology, it seems, is possible only for small groups. The Wiccan religion prefers to work by consensus, but Wiccans rarely assemble to make decisions in goups larger than twelve. Larger political systems that pretend to work on the will of the community as a whole, the will of the collective, or the will of "the people," actually function as dictatorships." (Democracy, Feb. 20, 2000) As we discussed in relation to our fourth principle, placing authority in individual conscience gives us freedom, but it also gives us responsibility. Democracy is not easy. It requires participation. In order to participate, we must also be educated. We must know how our government works, what the issues are, and who the leaders are. There are many requirements to make democracy work. Huston says, "Elections must be based on knowledge; therefore democracy depends on free speech so that ideas and information are generally available; democracy demands a free and responsible media to bring the information to general attention; and it also demands a good education system so that the people can interpret the information. Lacking any of these, democracy won’t be democracy."

There are some serious criticisms of democracy. One of the things that constantly threatens to undermine it is apathy. My colleague Hilary Landau-Krivchenia says, "Unlike a house which can be built and periodically renovated, democracy is the deep network of relationships of those who live within the house -- and must be rebuilt everyday. It relies upon our participation. As Vaclav Havel put it shortly after he took office in Czechoslovakia: "The best government in the world, the best parliament, and the best president, cannot achieve much on their own. Freedom and Democracy include participation and therefore responsibility from us all."" (The Vote: Representative Humans, November 5, 2000) If we don’t participate, we leave the decisions to others. We deny the voice of our conscience its right to be heard. It is a fact that the American people are getting more apathetic – some ridiculously small portion of eligible voters actually turn out to vote. But when we don’t vote, we give our power away.

In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam makes an interesting point: "When most people skip the meeting, those who are left tend to be more extreme, because they care most about the outcome." It seems that voter apathy might be the cause of our recent simultaneous increase in partisan politics, the unwillingness of political parties to cooperate or to compromise.

Another threat to democracy is corruption. One of the biggest concerns in the Enron scandal is the exorbitant amount of money they have poured into the campaigns of politicians, including our current president. Do the administration’s policies on oil, deregulation and other issues of interest to Enron have anything to do with all that money? It’s being looked into. And isn’t it a fact that the candidate with the biggest budget usually wins the election? How much money did the new mayor of New York City spend on his compaign? Millions, I believe I heard.

Democracy may not be great, but it’s the best system we’ve got. In a famous quoteWinston Churchill said, "Many forms of government have been tried. . . No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst from of Government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." And if we find that democracy isn’t working well, what can we do? Try monarchy? oligarchy? Tyranny? Anarchy? In another great quote, H. L. Mencken said, "The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy." (From Carol Huston) If it’s not working, the solution is to work harder at it.

Democratic process is an important part of our heritage as Unitarian Universalists. Our lineage goes back to the original settlers of Massachusetts, the Pilgims and the Puritans. In 1648, they adopted the Cambridge Platform, which is a declaration of principles of church government and discipline, and is the basis for our congregational polity, which is the system of governance we still use today. It means that the authority of the religious body lies in the local congregations. These congregations stand in voluntary covenantal relationship to each other, and work together as equals, without an ecclesiastical heirarchy.

Alice Blair Wesley, in her Minns Lectures from last year, asked, "So, who were the 17th century founders of our oldest UUA churches?" She says they were ordinary members of the Church of Enland who were not happy with the institutional patterns of the church. She continues, "These [patterns] were already long set before they came to consciousness. But they learned of - what looked to them like - very different and much better patterns from history, from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, which they understood as the record books of the free church. Having tried mightily and failed to reform the Church of England - because they were thwarted and persecuted and punished by the kings, the queen and the bishops of England - our ancestors made the amazingly brave and costly choice to remove - some 20,000 of them - to the wilderness of New England in the 1630s. They came to this continent to gather themselves into free churches, in what they called the "liberty of the gospel." Most of these very churches are the churches which in the 19th century first became, on this continent, Unitarian. And we UUs have kept ever since many - not all - of the of free churches, just as they were set in the 17th century.

. . . Our Puritan ancestors left England for New England, not because they disagreed with the Church of England - or other Protestants in Europe - over theology or anthropology. That is, over the nature of God or of humankind. They left because they disagreed over the theology of organization, over the question of how churches ought to be organized in the spirit of mutual love, over who should have authority and why - in churches rooted in that spirit. Two hundred years later, in the early 1800s, when we Unitarians separated from more conservative churches of the Standing Order, it was because we disagreed over the nature of God and humankind. We unanimously kept - and have kept to this day - the covenantal congregational polity set by our 17th century ancestors, for the same theological reason: Covenantal polity is rooted in the spirit of mutual love."

(Alice Blair Wesley, Minns Lecture #5)

As Wesley’s words show, Congregational Polity is a cherished tradition in Unitarian Universalism. There are those in our denomination who feel as strongly about that as about our creedlessness. Wesley refers to it not just as a tradition, or a governance style, but as a "theology of organization." It is rooted, not just in a spirit of mutual love, but in a belief in the inherent worth and dignity of all.

The democratic principle operates within our congregations as well. We elect a board, which is a representative body, entrusted to make policy and articulate the vision of the fellowship. We have an annual congregational meeting when we elect officers and vote on an annual operating budget that is presented by the board. If we approve a budget, we are responsible for funding it. That is why the budget comes before the entire congregation – because if the members are responsible for funding it, then members should have some say in it. There are certain other actions that require a vote of the entire congregation, like calling a minister, or ordaining someone into the ministry. You did both of those things recently.

Democratic process requires participation. It requires us to be informed, to show up for the discussion at the meeting, to cast our vote. With every right, with every freedom, comes responsibility. Let us not abdicate our responsibility. Let us affirm the inherent worth and dignity of all, including ourselves, by exercising our right of conscience, by showing up to vote. Let us work to ensure all voices are heard and no one is left out of the process. Remember, "The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy." May we affirm and promote our the right of conscience and the use of democratic process in our congregation, and in society at large.

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Midland is recognized by the Unitarian Universalist Association as a Welcoming Congregation. We welcome, affirm, promote and celebrate the full participation of all persons in all of our activities without regard to age, gender, sexual orientation, race or any other such category of exclusion.

Please feel free to contact us with any feedback, corrections or questions at jaham@delta.edu