A Sermon by Frank Benedetti

for the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Winston-Salem, NC

June 11, 2006

Sometime ago Gary and I were walking through Borders’ religion section and saw a huge display of Tim LaHaye’s “Left Behind” series. With over sixty million copies sold, the authors now have the financial ability to fund their fundamentalist causes. For those who may not be aware of the subject, it predicts a rapture that brings the return of the Messiah. Then, “true believers” will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven. Cars, trains and planes will crash. Stock markets will plummet, governments will fall, and those left behind will recognize that the true believers were right all along. And, in a fantasy of divine retribution, these fortunate few will witness the suffering of their political and religious opposites while they themselves sit triumphantly at the right hand of God.

What is even scarier than this scenario is that a majority of our politicians are actively supported by and have the ear of these believers and are allowing them to set our country’s agendas, create school curriculums and approve our judges. I began to wonder just who these new “chosen people” are, how they come to form their beliefs, why they consider themselves “victims” and how we can communicate with them. I turned to Karen Armstrong’s and Bishop Spong’s books to try to gain some insight.

We are currently faced with fundamentalist uprisings in the three major religions of our time – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They have more in common than you might think. They rely on a literal belief in their particular holy book. They question science and reason and have a penchant for censorship. Public education is viewed as an aberration.

Humans are seen as inherently corrupt. There is a deep fear of human sexuality and an abhorrence of pleasure. Fundamentalists’ treatment of women and gays alienates them from their humanity. Other faiths are viewed as false, and their adherents are seen as infidels worthy of death. Modern technology is seen as a challenge to the supremacy of their god. They also seek to impose their beliefs on others, not through toleration, but by total submission. They frighten their believers by tapping into their buried anxieties. Collectively they have unleashed a tsunami of religious intolerance from which we may never recover. We have indeed entered into a new dark age.

We need to keep in mind that Fundamentalism is not going to disappear. Its rise and fall has always been cyclical. It occurs every time a mass of people feel a perceived threat.

While this phenomenon is worldwide, I would like to concentrate on the predominant group in our country, the fundamentalists who consider themselves Christian.

Religious awakenings erupt in our culture when masses of people become fearful that uncontrolled, enormous change is at hand. The earliest outbreak occurred in the 18^th century in the northeast and was known as “The Great Awakening.” Whipped up by preachers, people were overcome with religious frenzy and ecstatic joy. In a whirlwind of collective intoxication, they quit work, immersed themselves in the Bible and experienced “born again” conversions. In behavior approaching bipolar disorder, they went from exuberant highs to devastating lows. People fainted, wept and shrieked in churches. Fundamentalist preachers saw all this as God’s ushering in a new age in America and rejoiced. Because they saw themselves as the sole possessors of the true faith, they split from the more mainstream denominations and isolated themselves from the larger community by setting up virtual “holiness zones.” This continues today.

In the early 19^th century, there was a second “Great Awakening,” which was different in that it eventually became political. Society was quickly changing and many felt threatened, left out or disenfranchised. Events that would eventually lead to the Civil War were budding. People joined torchlight processions that led to mass rallies in huge tents. There, with banners waving, the audience was emotionally swept away with music and tales of dreams, visions, signs, and miracles. This was also a time when the Mormon Church and the Disciples of Christ began to be formed.

Karen Armstrong points out that since the time of the Revolution, Americans had always thought of their country as being Protestant. People became alarmed as non-Protestant immigrants began to grow in numbers. While fundamentalists tried to reform society by working against slavery and alcohol, I suspect the latter may be a slam against the drinking habits of some of the new immigrants. Anti-immigration fears peaked in 1882 with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act. This worry continues today even in our area. The focus of a recent immigration hearing was “Gangs, Fraud, and Sexual Predators.” The early evangelical Christians formed the backbone of the Whig party. This later gave rise to the Republican party. Now, an internal occupying force calls it God’s own party.

Reason has given way to faith-based social policy, faith-based education and faith-based medicine. Some even dream of faith-based wars to promote the “end times” and the Second Coming of Christ.

The Civil War was viewed by many on both sides in apocalyptic terms. You may recall that the North’s anthem was “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which sings of the “glory of the coming of the Lord.” Preachers spoke of it as a battle between the forces of good and evil, between light and darkness, between freedom and slavery. A vision of a returned Christ was predicted which would usher in a new Christian kingdom.

In the early 20^th century the Scopes Trial crystallized the divisions that were still forming between fundamentalists and progressives. It was an historic clash between two sides, each of which saw itself as defending traditional American values. It is still being fought today. The protagonists then were Clarence Darrow, defending the teaching of evolution, and William Jennings Bryan, defending creationism. Interestingly, there was no interference from the state or federal level. While Bryan’s side prevailed, the secularists bitterly attacked and so ridiculed the fundamentalists that they withdrew to nurse their grievances. Unfortunately, they closed their minds further and became even more extreme in their views. They did not disappear as the smug progressives had hoped, but instead put down local roots by setting themselves apart. They formed their own churches and schools. They started their own publishing and broadcast empires, created radio gospel hours, and later televangelism.

Their Bible colleges sprang up as fortresses of fundamentalism in order to protect their students from the perceived evils of the modern world. An example is Bob Jones University in Greenville, SC. There one finds a careful selection of subject matter, strict social codes, mandatory Bible study, required chapel attendance, and strict school rules concerning dress codes, social interaction and dating. Since Gary and I are openly gay, we would not be permitted to step foot on their campus.

In the 1930s, groups like the Defenders of the Christian Faith were formed not only to confront evolution but also to alert America to a new fear - what they called the “Jewish menace.” They condemned every progressive piece of legislation and called Roosevelt’s New Deal the “Jewish New Deal.”

In the 1950s, when Communism became viewed as a threat, children practiced “duck and cover” drills while adults built bomb shelters. The Christian Crusade, although formed to fight Communists, joined Sen. Joseph McCarthy in seeing conspiracies everywhere, including the “liberal” press, leftist teachers, the Supreme Court and the ever-present “homosexual menace.” They saw the development of the atomic bomb and the founding of Israel as proofs of the upcoming millennium rapture.

More recently we have the arrival of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. As Emeril might say, they ratcheted the debate up several notches. They added feminism, which Pat Robertson defines as “a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.” Who knew?

After the Supreme Court ruling in Roe vs. Wade, abortion and contraception moved up on the list of abominations as Operation Rescue was formed by Randall Terry. It wasn’t too much later when clinics were bombed and medical doctors were killed on orders of the Christian Army of God.

We now live in a time of political anxiety, endlessly manipulated by our leaders and the media who stoke and exploit our fears. In response, we have become too willing to surrender our hard-won civil rights. My friends, I think that fear has driven us into what the late Edward R. Morrow called an “Age of Unreason.” Our modern society is constantly changing, and that is frightening to some. We live in a time of perpetual crisis in a culture that celebrates fast food, instant communication and immediate gratification.

Our fears include escalating crime rates, drug addictions, natural disasters, runaway asteroids, genocides and new fatal diseases. A lot of us try to medicate ourselves from our past, present and future with drugs and alcohol. Because we are wary of our neighbors, we distance ourselves and live alone with no shared experiences. We are plugged into our IPods, afraid even to be alone with our own thoughts. In our self-service economy, we pump our own overpriced gas, check out our own groceries and hastily retreat back to the comfort of our SUVs which serve as mobile fortresses. When trying to reach companies on the phone, we traverse through an endless chain of punching in numbers so we can listen to recorded voices in various languages. On the computer, even sex has become available without human contact.

Is it any wonder that people find solace in religions that provide a packaged set of beliefs designed to create a sense of family, comfort and stability? Legalistic faiths tell you how to behave, what to eat, drink, believe and wear. It’s a place where all questions have been answered, where all has been made known and where all has been foreseen. That is why non-believers are seen as godless secular threats inspired by Satan. Bar codes, the UN, and social security numbers are seen as signs of the Anti-Christ. Their strongly held beliefs serve as a survival technique for them.

Groups that support Reclaiming America for Christ see a cultural holy war. The Rev. Parsley of the huge World Harvest Church in Ohio proclaimed: “A spiritual invasion is taking place. I come to incite a riot. Man your battle stations. Lock and Load.”

Nowhere is this idea of a cultural war more evident than in their reaction to gay and lesbian people. Fundamentalists of all stripes regularly organize to fight any benefit given to gay citizens. This includes trying to overturn inclusion in non-discrimination policies, objecting to domestic partner benefit coverage, marriage equality and organizing boycotts.

In Iraq, Ayatollah Sistani decreed that gay people “should be killed in the worst, most sincere way.” Victims appealed to our troops who are there fighting for “Iraqi Freedom.” Instead of being rescued, they were rebuffed and ridiculed. What is even more bizarre is that two Christian Reconstructionist politicians, one from Texas, the other from Ohio, have openly called for the execution of gay Americans.

So-called ex-gay movements, empowered by White House invitations, are frightening parents of children as young as 5 who appear to show gay traits, as well as gays with low self-esteem. In Florida, a distraught man beat his 3-year-old son to death because of gay fears. These groups offer expensive programs and therapies in an attempt to “cure” us through “reparative therapy.” Well, we are not broken, ill, or sinful and we don’t need to be repaired, corrected or changed!

Those in power have always used fear to exploit and control people. It can be the fear of hell, the devil, witches, demons and anything or anyone different. We now have a fear of terrorism, which can be defined as anything the government wants it to be – from inquisitive reporters to citizens critically questioning governmental policies.

There is a significant population that believes the world must be destroyed in order to be saved. It is as if their god is a divine despot, living above the clouds, inciting dread and fear in order to be worshiped.

We need to communicate with these folks who have turned to Fundamentalism. We know that separation from each other and isolation only leads to more extreme behavior. But how do we open a dialogue when we not only can’t see things from the same point of view but don’t even speak the same language? How do we console people who have such deep-rooted anxieties and live in such fear? How do we speak to people who take comfort in rigidly following doctrine and blindly accepting authority with those who are searching and questioning? How do we reconcile those who believe in a wrathful god with those who see a spirit of unconditional love? How do we reassure those folks who would cast out the outcasts with those who willingly embrace them? How can we Unitarian-Universalists deal with this phenomenon? By giving testimony about our core values! But how?

Reliance on reason alone can’t counter these views because they find reason unfulfilling. It contains no sense of awe or mystery.  Yet we are called upon to engage in a dialogue, not a debate, about our deeply held beliefs. We must strive to do this in a non-threatening way, by speaking respectfully, yet without giving up our principles.

We don’t want to get into a situation where we are feeding into an escalating spiral of hostility. However, we do have much to bring to the table. For example, we need to vigorously reject the charge that we have no values. Of course we do – they are printed in our Order of Service. We recognize the godliness found in all human beings. We encourage personal growth that allows people to achieve their dreams and still be spiritual. We care about the environment and see an interdependent web of which we are merely a part. We also care deeply about social justice and the poor. This is an issue I personally use in my discussions with Christian fundamentalists. My understanding of the Bible is that poverty is mentioned 2,100 times and that there are more verses condoning slavery than the handful about homosexuality.

Even Jesus said in Matthew, “As you have done to the least of my brethren, you have done unto me.” So I ask, Why is this not at the head of your agenda?

We honor the inquisitive mind that reveres science and the search for truth. We aren’t troubled by subjecting our values to rigorous examination. We aren’t about controlling how people love. We don’t have debates over political cleansings. Nor are we more concerned with whom we should keep out than whom we welcome in.

I think we are extraordinarily spiritual because we encourage our members to explore all religious faiths. We don’t regret our female clergy nor repent our gay ministers.

So let us not hide our light. Let’s stand up proudly for our beliefs without letting our opponents define them for us. The challenges are formidable, but not insurmountable.

However, we must engage these folks by creating what Soulforce calls “a loving presence” and try to speak in their language. We can do this by looking into people’s eyes and speaking face-to-face in a non-violent manner.

But first, we should listen to their concerns. We will get nowhere by matching fear with fear. We can dispute myths by sharing our stories. Only then can we create authentic connections with others that unite, not separate, us. So be brave! Be bold! It takes courage to change the world. We can only do it one person at a time.

We can offer promise where others see peril. Hope lives in love but dies in fear. Let us be the ones who create light so we may all find our way out of the darkness.