North Prospect Union UCC — Ministers' Blog

On October 4, 1854, a day warm and muggy for the time of year, Abraham Lincoln addressed an overflow crowd at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield.  Ten months earlier Stephen A. Douglas had put forth the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which was designed to leave the question of slavery up to the populace in the new territories.  As the year progressed Lincoln and Douglas entered into a spirited debate.  Douglas was hoping to calm the roiled waters in the nation by getting the slavery issue off the federal government’s table.  Lincoln, for his part, objected that Douglas was repudiating nothing less than the introduction to the Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Standing in shirt sleeves and ill-fitting pants, according to Lincoln biographer Ronald White, Lincoln stated succinctly that Douglas’s slogan of “popular sovereignty” forces us “into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty … insisting that there no right principle of action but self interest.”  In a widely quoted portion of the speech Lincoln thundered with poetic precision, “Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust.  Let us purify it.  Let us turn slavery from its claims of ‘moral right.’”

We know the tragedy that befell the nation six years later.  Lincoln had rightly named the decay.  And he had rightly seen that at the core of the rot was the lie that selfishness and moral right are equivalent.  It is a truth I fear our great nation is once again on the verge of forgetting, and that at our peril.

The health care skeptics have created a lot of heat recently, but they’ve contributed far less light to the debate.  Indeed, the critics seem to have little intention of advancing either clarity or truth.  Why is that?  How do we explain the conservative vitriol against the present bills, which are even less comprehensive than those Richard Nixon once proposed?  As I watch the contorted faces and spewing anger on the news, it makes me fear that what we are witnessing is nothing less than veiled racism.  If you replay the tapes from the civil rights era, you will see the same facial expressions and rage we now see.  My guess is that electing the first black president has shown us both how far we’ve come, but also just how much racism is still with us.  Krister Stendhal once said that the civil rights movement put an end to racism as a noble point of view.  So, now racism is expressed indirectly, by calling the president a socialist and willfully misrepresenting his initiatives, not to mention his religion or place of birth.  It all makes me actually quite sad for our country.

Right now the most pressing collateral damage the president’s opponents are causing is in the health care debate.  The UCC has long advocated for universal health care and is now asking members to make their voices heard in its support.  It is looking for 100,000 signatures over the next few days.  You may add yours by clicking HERE.  It’s an idea whose time has come.

Has politics become religion?  For some it seems it has.  Otherwise it’s hard to explain the call for “separation” between the president of the United States and America’s school children.  In the wake of the president’s plan to address the nation’s schools some have reacted very strongly suggesting that the president is forcing children to hear views that they or their parents deeply reject.  Have we become so partisan that the chief executive and commander in chief of the country cannot speak to students without being accused of indoctrination?  If so, it’s a sad state of affairs.

There may be a silver lining, however.  Could this drama in the body politic cause us to reflect on how shrill it sounds when either religion or public life is assumed to be principally indoctrination?  Maybe we would begin to think that a more generous spirit in both arenas would make us a better people.

Like many of you, I suspect, I have found myself today mourning the loss of Ted Kennedy and reflecting on his era of political service. Like most of us, Ted Kennedy was flawed, and some of those flaws were glaring and costly to him or others. But today as I read and watched accounts of his long service in public life, I was struck by the depth and sincerity of the principles that guided his commitment to civil rights, healing the wounds of war, and his great unfinished business of universal health-care. It’s fair to say, I think, that Ted Kennedy consistently appealed to our better selves in addressing these issues. And that’s what I find most missing and dispiriting in the current political discourse. Today too many politicians seem to appeal to our basest instincts. Too many unapologetically and shamelessly inflame our passions of greed. Too many smugly preach outright lies simply because it’s what their base wants to hear. Too many would rather tear down their opponents than build up the common good. It is my prayer that in remembrance of Ted Kennedy our politicians might drop the meanspirited posturing and call us all to a politics of principles as we address the important issues of our time: health-care, economic recovery and war, to name a few.  What a fitting and positive tribute to Ted Kennedy that would be.