Against innocence

UU World: The Magazine of the Unitarian Universalist Association, Nov/Dec 2003 by McNatt, Rosemary Bray

A dispatch from the political wilderness

Illustrations by Chris Gall

THE STORY WE UNItarian Universalists tell about ourselves is a story of heroic dissent. Much ofthat story is true: For a long time, and in many places, we have affirmed life in the face of death; we have stood for justice in the face of injustice. That has been our gift and a small part of our blessing to this world. But what looks to us like heroic dissent has often gone unnoticed in the larger world. We call for a world of love and justice, but who is listening? The truth is that liberal religious people, including Unitarian Universalists, have been politically marginalized for some time. Once part of every crucial moral and spiritual conversation in American life, we have become in the last century merely a footnote, a feature story in the lifestyle section, or a segment in the last five minutes of the news broadcast where we alternate with other quaint stories of human interest. The stories others know about us are very different than the stories we tell about ourselves.

I have come to the painful realization that we sometimes conflate our dreams of the Beloved Community with the difficult and erueling work that might lead to its achievement.The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed that "one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites-polar opposites-so that love is identified as a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love." It isn't hard to notice that power without love surrounds us in this country today. But think too of the extent to which we live our lives amid expressions of love without political power. Think of the countless acts of mercy with which each of us may have aligned ourselves: We work with Habitat for Humanity, we volunteer at shelters and mentor children, we testify before hostile legislators unwilling to extend human rights to the whole human family; we lobby for an end to punitive drug laws that target people of color; we do a thousand things in an effort to make our love visible. And yet, if we had power, real political power, would not the hungry already be fed, those children already joyful? Would not Habitat be out of business and our legislators obsessed with supporting human dignity rather than denying it? Would not captives of every variety already be freed? If we had real power, is it not possible that our work would already be done?

KING CONTINUES TO CHALLENGE US: "What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love."

My thinking on this topic was provoked most recently by a Beacon Press book, Going Public, by the community activist Michael Gecan. (I reviewed the book in the March/April 2003 issue of UU World.) , A seasoned activist who is relentless in his use of strategy, Gecan heaps scorn upon those political liberals who, in their very public actions, hope to effect profound social transformation but who, in reality, create only a spectacle. He describes a morning in New York City in which hundreds of police officers were gathering in preparation for what he imagined would be a massive demonstration. Curious about the amassing of such large numbers of police, he went back during lunch to see what would transpire. He describes what he saw:

Five people stood. . . . Two had splashed black paint on their clothing and smeared black paint on their faces. They writhed on the sidewalk while a graying demonstrator pounded a drum and a young woman harangued the passing crowd. . . . What I was observing was not an action at all, but a reenactment . . . more theatrical than political . . . not just scripted, but plagiarized. . . .They were political idolaters.

I have been haunted for months now by Gecan's words. The notion of well intentioned activists as political idolaters is painful to consider but impossible to dismiss. I understand the vital importance of symbolic actions. As a religious leader, I regularly count on the unexpected power of those symbols to evoke in my gathered community a sense of the holy and a connection to one another. But upon reading and reflecting on Gecan's words it is hard not to imagine the many times that we as liberal religious and liberal political people have mistaken symbols for what is real, substituted what Gecan calls reenactments for the power that King reminds us can correct everything that stands against the love we seek.

I recall an event last spring, when we Unitarian Universalists witnessed for peace in a small circle in front of the UN one Wednesday afternoon. We made it so very clear that we opposed the war in Iraq being fought in our name; several of us were even interviewed by CBS Radio for later broadcast. I was glad to be there, praying in my clerical collar, witnessing to our common desire to end the war. Yet our numbers were so small, the gesture so futile in its impact, we could stand only as witnesses-articulate, well dressed witnesses who stood watch over our nation's failed foreign policy as we prayed, as one participant beat a drum, as people passed us and averted their eyes.