The sermon concerned Mattathias Maccabbeus and his son Judas -- men who could easily be described as extremists: intolerant, self-righteous fundamentalists, much like the Taliban, willing to kill in honor of what each knew to be the truth revealed to him by God. Much like anyone who truly believes in the rightness and certainty of his own beliefs -- that others are wrong, that he has seen the truth, that others must understand and accept that truth as dictated by the faithful.
"Extremism" as we use it refers to a political or religious view that allows no questioning. Extremism requires a single-minded commitment to achieving a social or spiritual goal that the extremist believes is in the best interest of society or the human soul. Extremism depends upon knowing the truth and rejecting contrary beliefs of others as "false truths."
On this celebration of our 227th year of independence from the British Crown and from the Church of England, we must ask how such a commitment to certainty -- to an unflagging belief that there exists a wrong way and a right way, and that you and your allies know the right way -- squares with our commitment to personal liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and to the principle expressed in Article 1 of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, drafted by George Mason, in the language that, when later borrowed and redrafted by Thomas Jefferson, became historic as the basis for the Declaration of Independence:
That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
So what is liberty? I submit that it is a concept that we cannot fully express with words. We may not be able to define the meaning of liberty, but we certainly recognize it by its absence, similar to the concept of obscenity, which Justice Potter Stewart of our Supreme Court memorably admitted he could not define, but that he knew it when he saw it. Beyond that, it is not my intention to define liberty or to argue over its meaning. My intention is to recognize this day (or July 4th) as the birthday for political liberty, for the establishment of a state that was created for the express purpose of preserving individual liberty, for beginning the process that continues today -- and will continue so long as our Constitution exists -- of discerning the attributes of individual liberty and defining how we may live together while exercising that liberty. Yes, we as a nation have done many things wrong, sometimes grossly wrong, sometimes in the name of liberty, sometimes in reaction to the existence of personal liberty. But our liberty allows us to voice our dissent, to protest and to sue. July 4th is the time to celebrate, in the now almost trite metaphor, that the glass is half-full, not half-empty.
I have not made a study, or researched the subject in depth, but it would seem to me that the concept of personal liberty arose from the concept of religious liberty -- that is, the acceptance of the fact that others believe differently than I do and that neither I nor the government, nor anyone else, can tell them that they are wrong or that they must believe something else. Through the development of religious liberty, we developed the concept of the individual, the individual who has inalienable rights and who is entitled to her own path to happiness.
Our Unitarian heritage reflects this evolution of religious liberty -- and fully demonstrates the conflict between liberal thought (meaning the recognition of individual liberty) and the belief in one truth.
In 1997, David Bumbaugh delivered a sermon here titled "To Burn a Man" in which he spoke out against capital punishment. His passionate and poetic analysis may be viewed as a rejection of the concept of certainty:
In 1553, a Spanish physician, geographer and theologian, one Michael Servetus, was imprisoned in Geneva, Switzerland, charged with heresy because of his books, On the Errors of the Trinity and The Restitution of Christianity. In these volumes, Servetus had challenged the traditional understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity, and the government of Geneva, under the leadership of the great Protestant reformer, John Calvin, seized him, tried him, convicted him of heresy, and burned him at the stake, his books strapped to his body. Calvin justified his actions by asserting that a heretic was far more dangerous to a community than a thief or a murderer. A thief only deprived one of worldly goods. A murderer only threatened a mortal life. A heretic threatened the immortal soul. A responsible government, a Christian government had no alternative but to silence the heretic forever by executing him, thus protecting the community from the infinite danger he represented.
Michael Servetus was not the first to be executed for questioning the doctrine of the Trinity; nor would he be the last. But his death was a turning point in the history of our tradition and left an indelible mark upon us. We have been suspicious ever since of dogmas and doctrines and policies which ignore the impact they have upon the lives of individual women and men. In much of our historic concern about the death penalty, the words of Sebastian Castellio continue to echo: "To burn a man is not to defend a doctrine. It is to burn a man!"
Indeed, the writings of Servetus laid the foundation for Unitarianism in Transylvania, as I learned when Ruth Vogler asked me to introduce the Rev. Alpar Kiss, from our partner church in Barot, Rumania, at a reception in his honor last spring. Until then, I had not paid too much attention to our partner church, except when Ruth and the other members of the committee made an announcement or report, or when Alpar visited us. But, in order to make a proper introduction, I had to read a bit about Unitarians in Transylvania. To say the least, I was thunderstruck. Here were the underpinnings of our concept of religious freedom. During the era of the Spanish Inquisition and when Protestant reformers were also burning each other for heresy, here, in the Edict of Torda in 1568, was a government espousing the very fundament of the religious and personal liberty that we may take for granted:
In every place the preachers shall preach and explain the Gospel, each according to his understanding of it, and if the congregation like it, that is good; if not, no one shall compel them to accept that preacher, for their souls would not be satisfied, but they shall be permitted to keep a preacher whose teachings they approve. Therefore none of the superintendents or others shall annoy or abuse the preachers on account of their religion or allow any to be imprisoned or punished on account of his teachings, for Faith is the gift of God; this comes from hearing and hearing by the word of God.
The effect of this edict on the thinking about liberty that underlies our Declaration of Independence may be seen in Article 16 of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted in June 1776:
Religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.
And in the Jefferson-authored Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom:
No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
This thinking is a far remove from mere toleration of differing beliefs. Although we frequently speak of practicing religious toleration, we Unitarian Universalists must speak more strongly of respect, honor and appreciation of differing beliefs, because the fact that we are each engaged in an individual search for the truth as it exists in each of our lives forms the core of our creedless creed. We have expressly rejected dogma, or the concept of an accepted truth, in favor of individual liberty and personal belief. The Roman Catholic definition of "religious toleration," as explained in The Catholic Encyclopedia, displays the chasm that separates us from orthodoxy:
Toleration in general signifies patient forbearance in the presence of an evil which one is unable or unwilling to prevent. By religious toleration is understood the magnanimous indulgence which one shows towards a religion other than his own, accompanied by the moral determination to leave it and its adherents unmolested in private and public, although internally one views it with complete disapproval as a "false faith".
To the contrary, the premise of Unitarian Universalism rejects the extremist and presumptuous certainty that would allow characterizing another's beliefs as "false." Our respect for liberty must preclude our judging the beliefs of others.
We must recognize that if we wish to believe as individuals, then we must allow others to believe and do as they see fit, subject to a proscription against exercising liberty in a way that diminishes the liberty of others. The corollary is the recognition that no one -- not me, not you, not our political leaders, not our philosophers, not our greatest theologians -- knows "the truth" about life, existence, God or love. Everyone is equal in this regard -- and the rationale for liberty is to allow each of us, to the extent that we wish to do so, to live our lives free from the dogma and the dictates of anyone else, so long as our conduct respects the liberty of others.
Last week, the United States Supreme Court strikingly affirmed this principle of liberty in the case of Lawrence vs. Texas, about which you may have heard because it concerned the privacy rights of all residents of the United States, whether homosexual or otherwise.
The language chosen by Justice Anthony Kennedy is almost religious in its affirmation of the principle of liberty and its importance to this ongoing experiment in political organization and in its rejection of the extremist view that claims to know with certainty what is moral and what is immoral, and that this so-called revealed moral code may be used to limit the liberty of others. As Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority:
It must be acknowledged, of course, that this Court previously held to the broader point that for centuries there have been powerful voices to condemn homosexual conduct as immoral. The condemnation has been shaped by religious beliefs, conceptions of right and acceptable behavior, and respect for the traditional family. For many persons these are not trivial concerns but profound and deep convictions accepted as ethical and moral principles to which they aspire and which thus determine the course of their lives. These considerations do not answer the question before us, however. The issue is whether the majority may use the power of the State to enforce these views on the whole society through operation of the criminal law. Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.
We also have recently reaffirmed the substantive force of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause, confirming that our laws and tradition afford constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education. In explaining the respect the Constitution demands for the autonomy of the person in making these choices, we stated:
"These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State."
This case involves two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. These two adults are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter.
Had those who drew and ratified the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment known the components of liberty in its manifold possibilities, they might have been more specific. They did not presume to have this insight. They knew times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for freedom.
And that is what brings us back to Mattathias Maccabeus and to extremism. Political hardliners, whether of the right or the left, and religious zealots believe that they know the truth. The Maccabees believed that they knew what God required and that the opinions of their fellow Jews who disagreed were blasphemy. The Maccabees' eviction of the occupying Greeks might have the appearance of promoting liberty, much like the Taliban's defeat of the occupying Soviet Union, but the use of force to dictate to their countrymen how to worship God, also like the Taliban, showed that liberty had nothing to do with their efforts, which were driven by fanatical certainty, by extremism in the defense of supposed liberty.
Perhaps the practice is no longer to burn heretics at the stake, but what was a heretic except someone who believed differently, who saw a different "truth" than the one accepted by the spiritual or political leadership and who had the insane courage to say it? Resorting to extremism is not defending liberty; it is telling others what they must believe, and then using laws to make them act in conformity with those beliefs.
Our tradition as Unitarian Universalists rejects that approach, as shown by the Covenant of the Unitarian Universalist Association reprinted on the back of your Order of Service and by the words we regularly hear on Sunday: "The sermon in a Unitarian Universalist setting is never the last word on any subject, but rather an invitation to further dialog."
Contrary to our recurring conceit, all of history that came before was not pointing to where we are as a goal. We are merely part of a process, as are our chosen form of government and our revolutionary Bill of Rights, Constitution and Declaration of Independence. On July 4th, we must celebrate the contribution of these documents and of this flawed governmental system to the process of civilization and to the promotion and furtherance of individual liberty. Happy Independence Day.
The sermon in a Unitarian Universalist setting is never the last word on any subject, but rather an invitation to further dialog.
You may want to read other visitors' comments on Tom Howard's "On Liberty and Certainty" .
If you wish to add your own comments on this sermon, please enter your name, e-mail address, city, state or province, country, and of course your comments into the following form: