The Practicing Progressive

The Rev. George M. Docherty died this past Thanksgiving Day at the very impressive age of 97. Unless you’re even older than I am, you probably don’t remember the good reverend or the sermon he preached to his congregation at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C. on February 7th, 1954. In his homily, Pastor Docherty, a native of Scotland, mused on the lack of any reference to God in the Pledge of Allegiance. He admitted that he hadn’t even known of the pledge’s existence until his 7 year old son recited it for him. Docherty was stunned when he first heard it. “I came from Scotland, where we said ‘God save our gracious queen,’ ‘God save our gracious king.’ Here was the Pledge of Allegiance, and God wasn’t in it at all,” he recalled in an interview in 2004.

The minister’s topic that particular Sunday was hardly coincidental. He knew that President Dwight D. Eisenhower was to attend services that day. One can only assume that Docherty was a powerful preacher as the very next day a bill was introduced in the House of Representatives to add the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. President Eisenhower signed it into law that same year.

Despite the assumption of many that the pledge dates back to the founding fathers,
the original Pledge of Allegiance was the work of another cleric, Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and socialist who penned the pledge in 1892 for a children’s magazine celebrating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America.

The addition of the divine blessing to our nation disturbed a great many citizens who felt the phrase violated the intentions of the First Amendment. Equally disturbing for many others was the assumption that the phrase posits: There is one God and, presumably, America abides under this one God’s benevolence.

Such an assumption is highly problematic to anyone with even a passing understanding of the development of religions. Even putting aside the monotheistic implication, an implication that precludes patriotic polytheists like American Hindus and others, the idea that U.S. policies and actions somehow reflect divine intent is troubling to the extreme. Our recent military forays and the continuing discrimination in domestic matters provides vivid evidence for many of us that this is a God we would choose not to be under at all.

A growing number of American citizens are feeling less and less aligned with traditional religious expressions. The problems inherent in assuming an omnipresent, omnipotent and benevolent deity manifest themselves in a myriad of ways from personal tragedies to very public horrors. Many spiritually sensitive people find the traditional image of an anthropomorphic heavenly being severely limiting and have turned to other theological models. To assume that the people of this one nation have one understanding of God is naïve at best and contrary to all evidence. As a parish pastor for thirty years, I can assure you that even in one small mountain congregation the range of understanding of God and godly actions is vast.
In the same week of The Reverend Docherty’s demise, a group of atheists filed suit against the State of Kentucky’s Department of Homeland Security for formally announcing that the security of that state "cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon almighty God.” Indeed, the official state position that offers offence to the atheists also includes a verse from the Bible: "Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." (Psalm 127) The atheists are not only concerned with what they consider the abuse of the First Amendment but also the very possible presumption that those assigned to protect Kentuckians’ safekeeping might shirk their duties off on a God who, the atheists point out, hasn’t been particularly consistent of late in the security department.
There are many who continue to believe that America’s Constitution assumes but one theological perspective. But of course there is no mention of God anywhere in that treasured document. The writers were abundantly clear in their intention to forbid any attempt on the part of this new government to intrude on the religious beliefs, or lack of beliefs, of its citizenry.
So, rest in peace, dear reverend, even though you disturbed the peace of many.

It was my naïveté, I suppose, that had me somewhat shocked when one of my counselees told me of her company’s policy regarding employment termination. It seems this particular institution had no use for a two-week resignation notice. The moment you reported to your supervisor you were resigning, you had exactly fifteen minutes to clear out your desk, turn in your keys and be escorted out the door by a security officer.

The company’s rationale was centered on the principle that once you had committed to employment elsewhere both your usefulness and productivity dramatically decreased, hence the speedy and undistinguished departure.

The lack of goodbyes and best wishes seemed a harsh penalty to me for an assumedly faithful employee with years of valued service but lately I’ve begun to see the wisdom in such matters.

Now saddled as we are with a lame duck administration headed by what history will surely judge as the lamest of ducks, it seems not just foolhardy but downright dangerous to be forced to endure more than two months of interregnum between the changing of the guard. Why, many of us are wondering, must we wallow in this governmental barrenness of inactivity when America, indeed all the world, is eager to move on?

Clearly, President-elect Obama is doing his best to get the governmental gears in motion in order to be at full-speed by January 20th but it just seems silly he has to wait so long for the presidential red light to turn green. To employ a very undemocratic but quite realistic image, we commoners are crying out: “The king is dead! Long live the king!” Let’s get on with it.

Amazingly, some elections still haven’t been resolved. There are two senate races yet to be determined along with threats to overturn the results of any number of propositions that did pass and shouldn’t or didn’t and should.

It all depends on your perspective, of course. While social conservatives are no doubt cheering their anti-gay victories in several states, others who are appalled by what they see as unjust and immoral legislation are gathering forces to overturn the majority’s mandate. All of this raises some interesting issues.

For instance, in Arkansas a strong majority there decided that gay couples and other non-traditional co-habitants could not be foster care-givers or adopt children. This in a state where only 25% of the children needing foster care have homes available to them. Fortunately, this foolishness may soon be rectified in the courts. Just this past week a Florida court decided that a similar law on the books in that state was unconstitutional.

In California, the now infamous Proposition 8 continues to rile the sizable minority who think it untenable for the state to deny marriage to gay couples. The fall-out over this election has been dramatic with several prominent folk losing their jobs over their support. The Mormon Church particularly is taking a big hit with demonstrations at various temples and calls for boycotts against Mormon-run enterprises.

Here the question revolves around the sometimes tenuous and often unclear relationship in America between church and state. Opponents of Proposition 8 are incensed that a religious organization would so heavily finance a political movement seeking to perpetuate their own religious views. Why, they wonder, must a worldview, clearly shaped by theology, be thrust upon all citizenry? Let Mormons forbid their own members from entering into gay marriage just as they have similar injunctions against the leadership roles of women and, until quite recently, of African-Americans. But why must they force their religious biases on others? One suspects and certainly hopes this matter will eventually be settled in a courtroom and not in a church.

Among the correspondence I’ve received over the last couple of weeks came comments from one gentleman who stated: “To try to undo the votes of us who feel as I do is not right.” Many of us would be in sympathy with such a seemingly democratic sentiment. Unless that sentiment meant you were denied your own constitutional rights. Not too many years ago, a majority of voters were incensed when civil rights legislation began to be instituted by the government in direct contradiction to their majority view. Nevertheless the government deemed it unconstitutional to treat African-Americans and others as less than full citizens.

Decrying activist-judges who go against the will of the majority has been popular among those who claim “To try to undo the votes of us who feel as I do is not right.” But when majority opinion precludes a minority’s civil rights, it is the Constitution which takes precedence. Thank (your divinity of choice) for that.

The Practicing Progressive

How do you win an election and still feel like you have lost?

There are lots of ways, of course. We’ve had one experience of it over the last eight years as a man who promised his party he’d be both compassionate and conservative ignored the needs of the poor and dispossessed all the while increasing governmental involvement in our lives and running up a multi-trillion dollar national debt.

This time, even while we celebrated the election of Senator Obama, our elation was tempered by the realization that America’s gay and lesbian citizens are, once again, subjected to state-sanctioned prejudice and discrimination.

Of the four anti-gay state ballot initiatives that passed, California’s absurd addition to its constitution appears the most vile and vindictive. Overturning the California State Supreme Court’s ruling giving gay and lesbian couples the same marital rights as other citizens was a singularly sinister act financed primarily by a few religious organizations including evangelical Christians, Roman Catholics (particularly via The Knights of Columbus) and the Mormons.

The Mormon Church, with a rather unique understanding of marriage all its own, poured millions of dollars into the California initiative outraging the millions of Californians who believe that “freedom and justice for all” means exactly that.

With a marital survival rate of around 50% among evangelical Christians, (no different than the national average for heterosexuals), one can’t help but wonder why folks who claim to focus on their families feel entitled to force their own unsuccessful version of marriage on the rest of us.

Even more discouraging was the apparent support for the measure among African-American Christians. The Black Church’s literal understanding of the Bible, shared with most white evangelicals, compelled them, I suppose, into disregarding loving relationships that fail to fit into their limited worldview. Since the statistics in the African-American communities regarding out-of-wedlock births and absent fathers is so glaringly inconsonant with the “traditional” understanding of marriage, the only conclusion I can reach is one found in repugnant religious demagoguery. Religious leaders demanded obedience and, this time, they got it.

Thinking of religious leaders’ shameful demands…the Catholic bishops, shepherd staffs at the ready, met this week in Baltimore to try and figure out how better to control their sheep. With the overwhelming defeat of Amendment 48 here in Colorado and similar proposals elsewhere, the bishops found themselves licking their wounds as they came to grips with their diminishing power among their people. In the waning days of the presidential campaign, several bishops, appalled by the possibility of a pro-choice president, came perilously close to publicly endorsing the Republican candidate. Other bishops were nearly apoplectic over Vice-President-elect Joe Biden’s and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s shared conviction that one can be a practicing Catholic without practicing all of the mandates of Catholicism. Statistics show that most Catholics will side with Pope Benedict when it comes down to the creeds but they’re hanging with Joe and Nancy when it comes to their lives.

Perhaps this concerted religious effort to deny the civil rights of a certain segment of the population was more of a last gasp of decreasing demagogic power than a fresh breath for Christian conservatives. Over and over again, history has shown that these hold-outs in the battles for social progress ultimately lose the war. The abolition of slavery, suffrage for women, voting rights for all Americans and so much more continue to show the inevitability of the defeat of personal bigotry and institutional bias. It is easy for some of us to remember the dramatic spike of violent acts perpetrated against brave African-Americans in those final years before the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Fire hoses, snapping dogs, shouted insults, beatings and worse made the headlines as the racists tried to stem the tide of progress with their desperate acts that we now see were really bigotry’s own death rattles.

May it soon be so in California, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida and anywhere else intolerance has temporarily triumphed.