Last week I shared some of my thoughts on religion in this year's election campaign. In a nutshell, what I said was that, throughout our nation's history, religion, and politics often mix quite well, but church and state never mix well at all. Thomas Jefferson, with Madison, the author of church and state separation, was the first president to offer a national Thanksgiving day prayer. Abraham Lincoln, though never churched, was as much a national theologian as he was a partisan politician. Both fought any abridgement of church and state. Yet each tempered his politics by his spirituality.
In recent years, political conservatives complained about the admixture of religion and politics in the 1960's, with Martin Luther King, Jr. and William Sloane Coffin among the favorite targets. In the 80's and 90's it was the political liberals who shouted foul, with Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell accused of stepping over the line.
This year the most obvious infusion of religion into the political arena took place when Al Gore chose Joseph Lieberman, an unabashed Orthodox Jew, as his running mate. I can't ever remember a modern candidate invoking God more often than Lieberman does. But just go back to Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address. It's almost all about God. God's judgment. God's mercy. Our need to repent. Our need to forgive. Not only is it the best Inaugural Address ever, but one of the finest, and most redemptive speeches in our nation's history.
A number of our presidents have had developed and dedicated spiritual lives. Five presidents, by the way, were Unitarians. Jefferson, both Adamses, Taft, and Fillmore. Those of you who may be tempted to crow about this (only Episcopalians have elected more presidents than we have) ought to pause at the name of Fillmore. By almost every benchmark, Fillmore was our least distinguished president.
As for Taft, a couple of interesting tidbits. After Taft left the presidency and before he became a Supreme Court Justice, he served as Executive Director of the American Unitarian Association. We have a photograph he signed to our congregation in the hall leading to our main offices on the second floor. Look at it when you are up there. President Taft was a calorically gifted man. If no president was a better theologian than Lincoln, none had a more developed paunch than Taft. But, and this is what is so cool about the photo, someone has airbrushed out about a third of his belly. Look at the picture. It is amazing. He is still very, very fat. But his paunch has a delicately drawn line tucking it in, with a little ink on the outside of the line to blend that part of him which has been cut off into the background.
I love this picture. But I love far more that when William Howard Taft left the presidency, he didn't go our on the speaker's circuit, but answered the call to run our denomination. As an ex-presidential act, this one is unprecedented. But it surely demonstrates that, throughout his career, William Howard Taft too mixed, not church and state, but certainly religion and politics.
We really can't help it. None of us can. Let me tell you this. I am far more interested in your and my own religious life than I am in our political preferences. Not that politics isn't important, or interesting. Carolyn and I had a couple of congregational dinners in our home last week, where the conversation turned to politics. My wife, who is in charge of such things as dinner conversation, even invited it. I didn't' mind. I loved the conversations. But most interesting were the variety of views. Over the two nights, Gore admittedly was ahead about three to one over Bush, but a number of people hadn't decided on their vote. Clinton had a slightly more shaky lead over Lazio. In fact, in response to one of my more flip comments, the most eloquent advocacy over the two nights was made for Lazio.
We are a liberal church. All our members, to one extent or another, are here because of the liberal Gospel. We draw from our own experience rather than from some other's revelation. We believe deeply that freedom, reason, and tolerance are central to any faith we could hook up with. And yet, even in this neighborhood --- even giving how hard it is to create, here, at All Souls, the kind of cross section of New Yorkers we would love to have we split on politics. I'm sure we split along every other cultural and national divide as well. We should be grateful that we do. If you are a Universalist and Universalist is to me a much more telling way to describe us than Unitarian you know that there is one light and that it shines through many windows. Religious fundamentalists of the Right say that the light shines only through their own window. Some, terrorists for truth and God, invite their followers to throw stones through other people's windows. On the other hand, anti-religious fundamentalists of the Left walk through the Cathedral of the World, observe the bewildering variety of windows and worshipers, and conclude that there is no light. But the windows are not the light, only where the light shines through.
In this same spirit, this morning I want to say a few more words about religion and politics. I want to talk about Jesus.
As I said last week, I have a bit of trouble with our two presidential candidates' public policy matters. George W. Bush says that Jesus is his favorite philosopher. Al Gore occasionally wears a wrist bracelet that asks "WWJD?" What would Jesus do?
This morning's sermon is not WWJD? Not even as they say in Silicon Valley, WWSJD? (What would Steven Jobs do?) Permitting a bit of presumption on my part, this morning's sermon is WJWD. What Jesus would do.
As a primary source for answering this question, I would suggest that our candidates turn to the Bible.
Let's start with foreign policy. During his three years of preaching, as a spiritual gadfly with a tiny following, Jesus didn't have an opportunity to develop a comprehensive foreign policy. I hope that this surprises neither of our presidential candidates. So we have to intuit his approach from his teachings. As far as I can tell the two main pillars of Jesus' foreign policy would be these. "Turn the other cheek." And, "IF he asks for your coat, give him your cloak also." During the coming debates, I would be surprised if either candidate adapted either of these foreign policy initiatives as his mantra.
Domestic policy is potentially more interesting. Let's begin with the economy. Other than "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" --- a clear injunction to pay our taxes --- Jesus doesn't have a lot to say about the economy. Only one parable possibly qualifies, the parable of the laborers in the field.
At the outset of the day a group of laborers are offered a set fee for twelve hours of work. At midday others come to work in the field, and sign on for the same fee. A few stragglers arrive just before closing time. Are they paid proportionately? Not at all. In fact, they pocket exactly the same wage that was given to those who had been slaving in the field from dawn until dusk.
As for family policy, I can't see any political advantage to working in Jesus' words about how he came to earth not to bring peace but to use his sword to divide "son from father and mother-in-law from daughter-in-law."
Not to mention the parable of the prodigal son. One child is a paragon of family values. The other, a wanton vagabond, squanders his inheritance in a life of carousing. When the prodigal returns home, the good son's fatted calf is killed to honor his wastrel of a brother who went out and broke almost every moral law: Honor thy father and mother; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not covet another's property; thou shalt not commit adultery. By nightfall this scoundrel is seated in the place of honor, on their father's right hand, at their hallowed family table, which shortly before he had desecrated by his absence, disobedience, and folly.
This is a wonderful tale of repentance and forgiveness, but I'm not sure how Gore and Bush plan to translate it into a national family policy.
Turning to social policy, we have the parable of the Good Samaritan. In Jesus' time Samaritans were anything but good. They were unclean, outcasts, untouchables. To hear what Jesus is saying, we must recast this story in modern terms. Think of it as the parable of the Good X-Rated Rap Artist.
An innocent victim lies in the gutter. Both presidential candidates walk by but are too busy to stop, since each is about to give an important speech about holding Hollywood accountable for its putative impact on violence and immorality in America.
Shortly thereafter the Good X-Rated Rap Artist comes along, comforts the man, takes him to a hospital, and gives him a little money.
"Who?" Jesus asks, "was neighbor to the man? "The Good X-Rated Rap Artist" we correctly answer, to which he replies, "Go thou and do likewise."
I can promise you this: Whether as :"favorite philosopher" or "go-to guru" Jesus would turn both candidate's campaigns absolutely upside down.
Imagine Jesus as a consultant for campaign finance reform. What would Vice President Gore do with Jesus' advice to overturn the money changers' tables in the temple. As given that his tax cuts appear to be targeted especially for the wealthy, what would Governor Bush make of Jesus' advice that a rich man can make it to heaven only if he gives everything he has to the poor.
Not that Jesus has nothing practical to say to our candidates. Take the passage in Matthew 25 where Jesus tells his disciples that when we die there is a quiz. The questions are, " What did you do during your lifetime about global warming?"
What was your position on medicare or social security?" Not even "During your campaign were you sufficiently militant in you abhorrence of homosexuality or abortion or big oil?"
No, the questions he asks are these. "Did you feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, heal the sick, visit those in prison?" According to the Bible, if you answer these questions correctly, you go to heaven.
To attain the presidency is certainly a great accomplishment. But in Jesus' book, heaven is a far more worthy goal.
The one way our presidential candidates and all of us for that matter --- might profitably heed Jesus is by responding to his calls to forgive, to not judge without placing ourselves first under judgment, to love our neighbor (even our enemy) as ourselves.
If this is what George W. Bush and Al Gore have in mind when they invoke Jesus' name, I'm all for it. Whoever is elected, if he follows these injunctions, the world might even be a slightly better place. Copyright AllSouls 2000.