Dysfunctional Democracy
The Rev. Matthew Johnson-Doyle
October 25th, 2009


Message: Dysfunctional Democracy

Note: The sermon is an oral event. This manuscript may not reflect the exact spoken words. © Matthew Johnson-Doyle, 2009.

Let me say this first,
because I think it is important:
there was never a golden age.

There was never a time in our democracy –
nor in the civic life of any country, or city-state –
in which all was well.

What time would that be?
It can’t be before 1865,
when some were counted only 3/5 a person,
and their owners got their votes anyway.
It can’t be before 1920,
when women were not allowed to vote.
It wasn’t before the 1965 Civil Rights Act,
an act that Unitarian Universalists died fighting for –
it took the death of two Unitarian Universalists,
including the Rev. James Reeb,
who had spent his career working and living
in poor black neighborhoods in DC and Boston and Philly,
who was murdered in Selma,
whose death helped convinced Lyndon Johnson
to send to congress, the following Monday,
the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

There never was a golden age.
Even after the Voting Rights Age,
wide disparities existed in the ability of people
to participate in the governance of their lives.

There never was a golden age –
when would that be?
During Nixon’s Watergate and Enemies List?
In the age of the military-industrial complex,
when congress votes to fund projects
that the defense department doesn’t want,
because it makes jobs in their districts?
Or, more likely, campaign contributions?

In the age of global capital,
when telecommunications executives
are busy trying to bribe
(for is not a campaign contribution just legal bribery?)
trying to bride congress
to allow them to take kick-backs from content providers
for faster download speeds?

Corruption, patronage, scheaming, pettiness –
these things have existed in our system of government,
and in every system of government,
since the beginning.

Since the first group of people said,
well, someone has to make decisions,
so let’s have Urg make them –
after all, Urg knows how to make fire,
and he brought me a pig –
ever since people started trying to live with each other,
there has been trouble in governance.

Democracy isn’t perfect.
It has trouble, like all the other systems.
What’s that famous quotation from Churchill:
“…democracy is the worst form of government
except all the others...”

Democracy is both a system of governance,
and it is an aspiration, a longing in our hearts.

There are, of course, different kinds of democracy –
mob rule is one, and sometimes we seem to come close to that.
Constitutional, republican democracy is what
our constitution calls for –
a system which is supposed to respect the rights of the few
against the tyranny of the majority
although how often have we had to fight –
and still have to fight –
for this principle.

A constitutional republican democracy
is what our constitution calls for,
but that is in our hands.
The constitution is just a piece of paper.
It has to be in your hands,
in your hearts.
You have to have the spirit of it.
You have say,
you have rights, even if I disagree with you.

Let me tell you a story.

[ Colorado – equality fight – sneaking feeling
- not everything is up for a vote

Democracy is both a system of governance
and an aspiration.

It is an aspiration.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell,
a Unitarian Universalist seminarian and author –
you might have heard her on NPR –
spoke at last year’s gathering of Unitarian Universalists –
she said something I’ve found very helpful.

She was talking about the first principle,
that Unitarian Universalists affirm the
“inherent worth and dignity of every person.”
This is hard,
because we wonder what about evil-doers.
I don’t mean the guy who is a little rude in line at the deli.
I mean genocidal maniacs.
I mean Pol Pot and Stalin and Jeffery Dahmer.
Can we really affirm the inherent worth and dignity of everyone?

What Melissa said was that our affirmation of dignity is an aspiration –
we hope to live in the world
where all people have dignity and worth.
We don’t live in that world,
but we want to.
And we commit to making that world real.

The same goes for our fifth principle –
the one where Unitarian Universalists affirm
the right of conscience
and the use of the democratic process.

We affirm it, we aspire to it, we work for it.
But we ain’t there yet, brothers and sisters.
We ain’t there yet.

This aspiration is in our bones as a faith.

The first and only Unitarian king,
a sickly young fellow who ruled Transylvania for a time
in the 16th century,
issued the first rule of religious toleration –
he said,
it doesn’t help your soul if you are forced to hear a preacher
that you disagree with,
so everyone should go to the church they like.

That idea was struck down by his successors,
but it is in our bones.

Our religious anscestors in this country,
they gathered in small towns
as a church to make decisions about their own affairs.
The congregational meeting was an important,
sacred, event.
God, they said, worked through democracy.

And this idea transferred over to their civic lives,
and helped to ferment the American Revolution.

John Adams. Abigail Adams.
Thomas Jefferson.
Benjamin Rush, a delegate to the constitutional convention from Pennsylvania,
Benjamin Franklin.
Paul Revere.

Every one of them, Unitarians.

William O. Douglas.
Clarence Darrow.
Susan B. Anthony.

Unitarians.

We care about democracy.
Unitarian Universalits join the league of women voters.
We volunteer as election judges.


We pay attention,
and volunteer,
and run for office.

We petition.

This is a lot to be proud of.

And yet,
it seems, sometimes, to come to naught.
Why participate in democracy
when democracy seems so dysfunctional?

When the Mayor and the Unions can hardly speak to each other,
what are we to do?
When the State is ruled as the person fiefdom
of one member of the state house,
what are we to do?
When the media amplifies the extremes,
the shouters, the birthers, the red-faced screaming few,
what are we to do?
When one member of the US Senate
can delay a bill, or a nomination, or any action at all,
for as long as a minority of senators,
mostly male, all white,
representing mostly rural, unpopulated states,
what are we to do?
When the wealthy and the powerful,
despite the mess they’ve made of the rest of our lives,
continue to get their way in the corridors of power,
what are we to do?

How do we make dysfunctional democracy functional?

1. Put perfection aside.

Asking for perfection in government opens the door
to totalitarianism, or disappointment.
Did people think that Obama would snap his fingers
and all would be right with the world?

The genius of a constitutional republican democracy
is that is recognizes, in its structure,
that we are mortal and flawed human beings.
The Unitarians and Episcopalians who wrote those documents
had high aspirations,
but they knew how the world worked.
So that’s step one:
put perfection aside.

2. Take your principles seriously.

there is some tension, I admit,
between 1 and 2.
Although we can’t ask for perfection,
we have to be serious about what we care about.
What are your lines in the sand?

I won’t vote for someone who isn’t serious
about ethics and good government.
And it doesn’t matter what party they are.

I also won’t vote for anyone
who tries to censor public libraries,
or who expresses any sentiment towards limiting the freedom of speech
or religion.

Nor will I vote for anyone who
supports second class –
or no class –
citizenship for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender folks.

I’ve voted Green and I’ve passed on a race altogether,
rather than vote for someone of a major party
when I couldn’t stomach either of them.

And taking your principles seriously isn’t just about voting,
it is about your whole civic life.
Where you donate.
Where you live.
Where you send your kids to school.
How you eat.
How you drive.

The goal of Unitarian Universalism
is to help you be more whole,
more purposeful in your life.
The way you do that is by,
every day,
voting
”for the right to dream of a world
where the word politics
doesn't stop me in my tracks,
and where the word honor still
has a few good meanings left.”

If you had a hammer,
what would you hammer out?
Justice? Peace?

OK, then – get busy.

3. Get local.

So much of what matters in our lives is decided at the local level.
School board meetings.
City Council.
Little groups of part-time public servants,
meeting in small rooms,
doing the business.
Places where a small group of committed citizens can really make a difference.
In Rockford,
and Loves Park,
and Belevidere,
and all over this region,
citizens need to step up.
Show up.
Organize.
Make their case.
After they fail,
get up and try again.
Keep at it.
That’s the way change happens.
And this is where dysfunctional democracy becomes functional.

4. Stay in the Spirit

Democracy is a spiritual task.
This is not, obviously, to say that we should allow or promote
a particular religion to be required as entry
into the civic life.

But the aspiration to democracy requires spiritual vision,
and spiritual discipline.

Is it not, after all,
a claim of faith
that all people are equal?
Is it not, after all,
a spiritual claim,
that justice is more important than profit.

Love, Carter Heyward says,
“is a conversion to humanity –
a willingness to participate with others in the healing
of a broken world
and broken lives.”
Democracy depends on love,
real, practical, committed love.

I submit that one of the reasons our democracy
seems to be in trouble
is because of a lack of love for humanity.
And that is a spiritual task.
Really, the spiritual task:
to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Nothing is more important.
Nothing is harder to do.

5. Make light, not husks

One son filled the hall with garbage.
The other with light.
Our task as participants in democracy
is to tell the difference.
What is waste, rubbish,
the appearance of action?
What is real, illuminating, helpful?

To tell the difference requires patience,
study, engagement,
the willingness to change your mind,
to engage the facts beyond ideology.

…

In don’t know that these things will fix things.
I’m sure they are no magic trick.

But it seems to me that democracy,
in the end, is like life.
There is good and bad.
We are human beings,
not gods.
And we are finite, limited, creatures.

There is tragedy, and greed, and malice.
True in life, and true in democracy.

And there is good, too.
There is service, and depth, and integrity.
There is righteousness, in the good meaning of that word.
There is compassion and beauty.
True in life, and true in democracy.

There is Abraham, and Martin, and John, and Bobby –
not a one of them perfect,
god knows,
but each of them striving for a better, more whole, more just
union.

How can we keep from singing?
When friends by shame are undefiled?
When justice needs be sung from every land by every tongue?

How can we keep from singing,
when we are on our way to freedom land?
When the song is itself the map and the pledge
on a railroad of freedom and hope?

When so many have given their lives,
their hearts, their passion
to the cause of a better democracy,
how can we stop just because
sometimes it is hard?

We acknowledge our limitations and our failings
with honesty and grief.
But we acknowledge, too,
that this is not the end of the story.
The story is still being written.
We are helping to write it.
Yes, some things are broken.
Yes, we are sometimes broken.
But election day is every day,
and so, what are you going to vote for today?