First Parish Unitarian UniversalistE Pluribus Unum?
A Sermon preached by the Rev. Diane Teichert
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton, MA
September 23, 2001
I should have been working on my sermon Friday night since I knew I would be likely be pretty weary when I got home on Saturday evening from the all-day Leadership Retreat. However, my mother called.
Apparently, she had gotten into quite a discussion with a co-worker on Friday, about Muslims. The woman went on and on about the jihad and about how "they" are all out to destroy our American way of life and so on. My mother is a committed liberal Christian, an activist I would say, someone who believes in putting her faith into action, on a variety of causes such as racial justice and world hunger. Anyway, she found herself challenging this woman, saying."I think you're wrong about your generalizations. My daughter is a minister and she preached about Islam."
Some of you might remember that sermon from Martin Luther King Weekend in 1999, but probably not as well as a proud parent. She thought it was clever how I tied some great quotes from Dr. King to an exposition on Islam. But, it didn't really feel like a sermon to her. Later in the day, she told me that she inquired with some of you during coffee hour as to whether you liked sermons to be like lectures. Fortunately for me, someone said, "Oh, yes. We like to learn new things on Sunday morning."
Anyway, last night she located her copy of that sermon. However, she was dismayed to find a line in one paragraph that, taken out of context, would reinforce her co-worker's opinions of jihad. She read the paragraph aloud to me over the phone.
"And so we have the Five Pillars of Islam. Some Muslims say there is a sixth pillar, the jihad or "struggle in the way of God." But, it has no official status as such. The jihad is the obligation of all Muslims to exert themselves to realize God's will, to lead virtuous lives and to extend the Islamic community through preaching, education, and so on. ["Sounds like our evangelism to me," she interrupted, "what's wrong with that?] Many view it as inner struggle, but its association with war is also found in the Qur'an: "If they fight you, slay them: such are the desserts of those who deny the faith." ["See," my mother said, "that's the line she'll take out of context to support her views." Then she read on.]. But, the Qur'an also warns, "fight those who fight against you but do not provoke hostility (for) God has no love for those who embark on aggression."
I told my mother that the Hebrew and Christian scriptures were full of conflicting passages, too. Maybe she could select several examples to read to her co-worker, showing her that Islam is similar to Judaism and Christianity in this way. I suggested that the Popes must have found Biblical scriptures to support the Crusades, just like Islamic extremists argue for their holy war. She eventually decided to let her co-worker read my sermon, but to try to make sure that one line is not taken out of context.
These kinds of conversations are happening all over the United States in recent days. I hope there's always someone like my mother within earshot, someone who will protest the generalizations about Islam, challenge the blaming of all Muslims, and try to provide accurate information. Someone like any of us who here today. I believe we Unitarian Universalists are uniquely called to be religious-educators of our neighbors, friends, relatives, and co-workers.
One of our ordained Ministers of Religious Education, Cheryl LeShay, wrote last week,
As a Universalist, I believe that people are inherently good. Terrorists are made, not born. In order to get someone to murder so many people in a suicide mission for their God, one has to be a very diligent religious educator. One must teach vengeance, selflessness, and hatred.
As Unitarian Universalists, we are religious educators for peace, justice and love. I am not able to bring back all those folks that died. I cannot comfort all those that mourn. I cannot heal a country, a world, from the fear of violence. But I can teach who I can to be open minded, welcoming, loving, peace wielding members of the world.
Some give blood. Some send food. I am going back to work.
Indeed, here at First Parish, our Religious Education Program starts it work today, in a new way, with a theme that, tragically, could not be more timely.
This year, the Religious Education Program at First Parish has adopted a thematic approach, meaning that the curriculum from Pre-K to High School will be organized around a common theme. The children and youth of all grades will be learning about the same things generally, but in ways appropriate to their ages. So, on the way home after Coffee Hour, you parents have a head-start on the conversation about "what you did in your class today"-at least you will know the theme! And, if there is more than one child in the car, they may even compare notes or raise questions of one another.
The theme chosen for this year is the World's Religions. Their study will begin with the three so-called "religions of the book": Judaism, Christianity, and Islam which are distinguished from other major religions by their emphasis on written scriptures. In the winter tri-mester, when our Religious Education Program has in the past prepared a play to present to the congregation on a Sunday morning in March, this year they will instead spend the semester exploring the world's religions through the arts-visual, musical, dramatic, literary, culinary, martial, photography, etc. Which of the arts they get to explore will depend on what talents and interests you adults in the congregation are willing to share with them. Please watch for requests for your help in leading a mini-workshop in your area of artistic interest and consider what might be fun for you to do with our great kids for four or so Sundays. Come mid-March, it is hoped they will be ready to share their work with the rest of us, possibly in the form of an "Arts Openhouse." It sounds like fun!
Why do we consider it so important for our children to learn about the world's religions? Isn't it more important for them to have a religion themselves?
Yes, of course it is more important for them to have a religion themselves. To sense the spirit of life in themselves and to know how to nourish it-to know it as the light of love or even as God and to trust it in themselves and in others. To experience the gifts of congregational life-the give and take of ideas and caring, the mutual trust, the opportunities for work and play together, the way energy for good works can be magnified in collective action. To be grounded in strong moral values. To honor and strive for a set of clear ideals. To know and identify with the heritage and history of both Unitarianism and Universalism, as well as our heritage and history since their consolidation in 1961.
Of course, this is the place for our children to develop their own religious identity. If we don't teach it, no one will. If we don't preach it, no one will. If we don't live it by example, no one will! So, we do! It comes first.
But, close behind that first priority is another: inter-religious understanding. We want our children to understand that the "free and responsible search for truth and meaning" proclaimed by their Unitarian Universalist religion (and protected by the U.S. Constitution) is no more legitimate than anyone else's, and no less. We teach our children that there are many paths to love and justice, many ways of understanding the truth, many notions of the divine, many rituals and celebrations, and that no one religion has a corner on the truth.
This is more than tolerance. It is more than acceptance. This is a commitment to understand. And, it's a stance of welcome. It's radical. It doesn't come easy. It requires trying to understand other religions as much from the point of view of those who practice them as is humanly possible. That's not completely possible, because no one can truly set aside his or her own cultural perspective in order to understand another's. But, we can try. And, in so doing, we inevitably learn something new about ourselves and our own religious identity.
Tragically, this theme could not be more timely. Will the events on and since September 11th challenge our commitment to inter-religious understanding and our stance of welcome? How can we help our children to understand and welcome people who practice a religion that is now so prominently associated with hi-jacked airliners flying into tall buildings and bursting into deadly flames? Will we speak out against inflammatory statements or violent actions against Muslims? Will we go out of our way to offer support?
Many of you have asked how we might support the Islamic Center of New England located not far away in Sharon. Beyond sending a letter of support (which you may sign if you wish during Coffee Hour), I am not yet sure. My Unitarian Universalist colleague in Sharon says she has been inquiring as to what is needed herself and will let me know what she learns. They were not answering their phone this week and their website was not available.
The letter simply says,
As your neighbors in Canton and the surrounding towns, our congregation extends to you our friendship in this time of national mourning, turmoil, and response to the deathly attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon. We understand that the innocent members of your religious community are no more responsible for those attacks than we are. If we can be of any support to you in the days and months to come, we would be honored to help. Please contact us.
The elected president of the Islamic Center of Boston happens to live in my town and was interviewed by the local newspaper. He said, "Muslims have to tell everybody that what happened is not Islamic. In the Qu'ran it is stated clearly that if you kill one innocent person, you kill all of humanity.This was not Islamic by any means. Just because one Muslim has done something wrong, doesn't mean the whole community should be blamed for it."
Tahir Chaudry also told a sad story in the interview. When he arrived at the Center, which is on Route 20 in Wayland, on the Friday morning after the attacks, he "found a man weeping on the front steps. This man had lost his seven-month pregnant daughter and her husband on one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center. Because of their `Muslim-sounding' names on the manifest of passengers, the FBI questioned this man's family. So, in addition to grieving for his family, he had to worry about clearing his name, too."
Can you imagine? Your daughter, seven months pregnant, has been killed. Your son-in-law, too. You are in shock and in grief. Then, you are interrogated about your possible complicity in the very same attack, raising fears of imprisonment, deportment, or worse. My heart goes out to him.
And yet, how else do law enforcement officials track down those who supported these attacks? I hope this gentleman was treated with kindness and respect.
The fact that many innocent Muslim-Americans-including many who worked in the World Trade Center-lost their lives in the attacks has brought to the attention of non-Muslims just how diverse a nation ours has become. Over the summer, I read a new book by Diana Eck who makes exactly this point. You may have heard Bill Moyers interview with her on Wednesday evening. An opportunity to hear the author speak in public is coming up in October and the details are in the announcements printed in your order of worship.
The book is sure to startle some folks. Its cover is striking. It displays a flag with red and white stripes and a blue field dotted not with stars but with symbols of the world's religions. Its title is provocative, A New Religious American: How a "Christian Country" has Become the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation. Some Americans will be alarmed by the book. But, I was surprised, inspired and made proud by the American success stories of so many different religious communities-Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs. Over the past three decades, many have raised money to build meeting places, and started religious education programs, provided social services, and organized advocacy groups to represent them in the American democratic process. The promise of religious freedom has been fulfilled for many. The motto of our republic, E Pluribus, Unum or "out of many, one" has been taking shape, religiously.
In the introduction, Diana Eck tells how she lived in India for a year as a college student in the sixties and then entered graduate school to study comparative religion, focusing on India, fascinated by " India's many religious communities and their interrelations, tensions, and movements over many centuries. India," she writes, "became a kind of second home as I moved back and forth between Boston and Banaras, doing my fieldwork on the other side of the world and then returning to Harvard Square, which seemed by comparison a quiet village, moving at a leisurely pace."
When Eck began teaching comparative religion at Harvard in the mid-1970's, she says, the "challenge was to get my students to.begin to glimpse what the world might look like from the perspective of a Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh, those people whose lives and families I had come to know on the other side of the world. My students held all the usual preconceptions and misconceptions afloat in mainstream American culture: these religions were seen as exotic, deeply spiritual, perhaps seductive, even dangerous. In any case they were far away, at lest until the gurus of the "new age" brought them to America. But never did I imagine as I started teaching at Harvard in the 1970s that by the 1990s there would be scores of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh students in my classes-not just international students from India, but second-generation Americans, the children of what we have come to call the new immigration [or the brain drain]. Never did I imagine that by the 1990s I would be taking my students to Hindu temples, Islamic centers, and Sikh gurdwaras right here in Boston. Or that by the 1990s the very interest that had drawn me to India-the study of a complex, multi-religious society-would lead me to study the world's religions in my own country." (p. 12)
Today the United States is a complex, multi-religious society. Even the community of children here at First Parish is complex religiously. Several of our adopted children are knowledgeable about the religion or religions of their birth country. One child will certainly gain impressions from her dad who grew up Muslim and at least one other from a father who practices Buddhist meditation. Many of our children of course know about Judaism, Roman Catholicism, or Protestantism-the childhood religions of their parents.
But, our children will not need to travel abroad if they want to study the world's religions. They may well learn about them from their classmates at school, teammates, fellow scouts, and the young people they meet at sporting events and other kinds of competitions. Some of the children they will know-or already do know-likely attend one of the one hundred and fifteen Buddhist, Sikh, Islamic, Hindu and Jain houses of worship or centers in Massachusetts [source: Pluralism Project]. Close by to Canton, there are two Jain centers, one in Attleboro and the other in Norwood, and the Islamic Center of New England in Sharon; in the greater Boston area, there are numerous more Islamic centers, mosques, Buddhist and Hindu temples, Sikh and Jain centers.
We believe that the exposure to the world's religions experienced by our children at First Parish will prepare them to be genuinely interested in other children's religions, and knowledgeable enough to speak up about stereotypes, bigotry, and misinformation. May we adults set for them a good example.
In 1968, near the end of his last book Why We Can't Wait, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. tells of a novelist who died whose papers contained a list of suggested plots for future stories. The one most underlined was this "A widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together." "This," says King, "is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited a large house, a great `world house,' in which we have to live together-black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu-a family unduly separate in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace."
Here in the United States, to an extent King could not have imagined, we now have our own version of that "world house" in which people practicing every religion of the world must learn to cooperate in the democratic process. Of the many, may there be one. May there be peace, may it begin with us. Amen.