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WE CAN'T QUIT NOW
by C. Welton Gaddy,
Executive Director of The Interfaith Alliance
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October 20, 2002
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I know you–not all of you, individually by name, of course, but some of you; and all of you as a congregation–your history, your reputation, your service in the community, your impact on this nation. I know you as people who like to think, raise questions, and engage tough decisions. You appreciate pluralism, resent dogmatism, tolerate no easy answers to complex questions, and find those who speak with certainty about mystery, theology, and spirituality more than a little bit arrogant. I know of your involvements–your appreciative participation in democracy, your offerings of sensitive care in times of crisis, your labor in defense of liberty and unwavering support for civil rights. I know you.
You must be tired! Perhaps you are frustrated. Maybe some of you are discouraged. A few may even feel defeated. Or, am I simply projecting my feelings on to you? I know all too well the range of all of those feelings generally and the substance of each one specifically.
"What has happened?" we ask introspectively or maybe looking around inquisitively. Only a short time ago, or so it seems, the market was soaring, plans for an early retirement were proceeding, people were eagerly talking about interfaith events that could birth new levels of understanding and cross-cultural friendships, and worries about misjudgments in the White House sprang mostly from a prurient interest in one-on-one erotica rather than the offense of words or actions that caused nations to go to war.
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Now, though, something different– something different yet something we have known before and desired never to know again–something different surfaces once more–the ugliness of uncivil talk, prejudice spit out with vitriolic words akin to poison-tipped spears, intolerance posing as religious commitment, isolationism parading as political courage, infringements on liberty hailed as initiatives to strengthen security, and a new course of study on war thrust into the hands of a public that thought it would not have to study war no more.
Surely, we don’t have to deal with all of this again, we think. There are better things to do–start a family, read a new volume of non-fiction, sit and think, play with a grandchild, write poetry, go for a walk, or enjoy a long conversation with a friend. Besides, we have had enough, enough, enough rancor, enough idiocy, enough nastiness, and enough subterfuge–people claiming the identity of religious leaders pounding out partisan politics behind their pulpits and under the rubric of faith sewing seeds of suspicion, prejudice and intolerance within their congregations, officials of justice pledging to use the authority of their offices to establish policies that threaten the stability of civil rights and erode the foundations of liberty that make possible justice for all, legislators defining leadership in terms of chasing popularity and praising a strategy of violent conflict as the methodology of peace.
We are tired of it; weary within our souls that we must address again so much that has been addressed so many times before.
But, friends, we can’t quit now. Too much is at stake. The Interfaith Alliance is presently involved in its election year program that we refer to as "Call To A Faithful Decision." I set before you that call, that challenge. We can’t quit now.
Repeatedly in recent days my mind has scurried to a piece of poetry scribbled by a prophet named Isaiah eight centuries or so before the dawn of the Common Era. Sometimes I think this old harbinger of encouragement and instiller of hope must have resided in the same emotional and political neighborhood that we inhabit today. Isaiah wrote, "They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."
Given the size of the challenge before us, the substance of that prophetic vision can offer us sustenance. I see promise here.
The prophet affirmed a spirituality in which faith is seen as a journey and walking is an appropriate mode of travel. Though the journey has a goal, to be sure, in the most basic sense, the journey is itself a goal.
Horrendous problems develop when one group of people imagines that it has arrived while all others are still on the way. When individuals start placing periods or exclamation points where commas or ellipses or question marks belong, trouble develops theologically and socially as well as grammatically.
Walking is a legitimate mode of spiritual travel. The prophet did not assume that religious integrity requires everybody to live at a lofty stage of hyper excitement always smiling while rushing to another activity. A person of religious devotion can be plodding, mumbling, even at times doing one thing and wishing that she were doing something else.
For me the Isaiah passage sketches a word picture of faithfulness–doggedly being true to who we are, to the vision that we claim, to the values that we cherish, to the God whom we worship. The life of the spirit is not about always winning or constantly succeeding; it is about not giving up, staying the course, showing up when we know we may lose, and working to the end of the day. Plodding can be as much of a spiritual discipline as running or praying.
Late in the spring of 1998, a Taiwanese cult based in Texas announced that God would make a nationwide television appearance early the following Wednesday morning. According to the group’s prediction, God would appear on channel 18 of every television set in North America. The press release regarding this amazing phenomenon stated that a television would not even have to be turned on for the divine image to appear on the screen.
This bizarre announcement prompted a whole series of questions in my mind. Why was God being partial to people in North America? More particularly, why was God showing preferential treatment to Americans who owned television sets? Why would God, desiring to reach all people, appear only on channel 18? Why, that is not even one of the numbers rich in religious symbolism.
It just so happened that I was in Texas for a speaking engagement on the weekend after the announcement was made. So in the privacy of my hotel room, I turned on channel 18 to see what network God had chosen for this dramatically staged revelation a few days later. I must tell you that when I saw a Disney program playing, I thought how upset Southern Baptists were going to be if God did not honor their boycott of Disney.
Then came musings of anticipation. What if God really shows up on television? What will we learn about the divine identity? Will God be wearing a robe that looks like an American flag? Will God be holding a James Dobson book on the appropriate hierarchy for a religious family that provides helpful hints on how wives can be graciously submissive to their husbands? Will God, confirming Pat Robertson’s prediction, confess to targeting Orlando for tornadoes and hurricanes because of the city’s hospitality to gays and lesbians? Will God be commending the guidance of a voter guide prepared and distributed by the Christian Coalition? God on television!
Wouldn’t that be simple? I hate to admit it, but sometimes, especially when I am tired, I wish things were that easy–turn on a television set and watch God address the universe; providing simple answers to all tough and complex questions, outlining a prescription for political activism that is akin to a diet in which anybody can lose 50 pounds in 30 days and while eating all they want.
But it’s not that easy. It’s not that simple. Facing reality ushers our thoughts right back to All Souls Church on a Sunday morning just days away from another national election. Friends, we can’t quit. There is a terrific amount of work to be done, brief notations of which include at least the following responsibilities.
We have to shore up the foundations of freedom. Freedom is under attack. I speak not of threats rooted in emissaries of a foreign government but of threats resident in people who live in this nation. The Supreme Court is demonstrating increased openness to the abolishment of any kind of wall separating the institutional entanglement of religion and government. The current administration is proving to be the most invasive in history when it comes to religious institutions. As we speak, personnel from numerous cabinet-related agencies are blanketing the nation with offers to make houses of worship repositories for federal funds to promote spiritual faith as the sine qua non guarantee of effectiveness in social services. A lack of understanding regarding the meaning of religious liberty allows people to toy with the idea of forcing a repetition of the divine name as an admirable act of patriotism. So confused is the matter that not long ago a mayor in a Southern town, when challenged about the word "Christianity" appearing on the seal of his city, exclaimed, "Christianity is not a theological or spiritual word, but a patriotic, national word."
Commentators are fond of saying that everything changed on September 11, 2001. A lot did change, but not everything. Terrorist attacks on this nation did not change the value of freedom or the necessity of preserving freedom. A passion for security must not be allowed to cause us to destroy freedom in order to save it.
We have to check and correct religious extremists. Spokespersons for various religious ideologies are fanning flames of hatred and divisiveness among us that will tear us apart or worse.
The CBS Television program "60 Minutes" did all of us a favor by allowing us to listen in on conversations among people who would have our nation shape its foreign policy according to the dictates of one particular method of literalistic interpretation of the Bible popular among fundamentalist Christians. A great grandfather of the Religious Right movement in this land, declared that Jews own "every grain of sand" between the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean Sea and that most of the Palestinians could be "cleansed" from this territory. The founder of a major national Bible study movement that employs a literalistic method of interpretation, explained how God opposed the peace initiative in the Middle East, known as the Oslo Accords, and removed key persons who were working on this plan. Her point was that the Battle of Amageddon, predicted in apocalyptic literature, will settle questions about Jerusalem by setting up the return of Christ at which time all Jews will either convert or die. A primary spokesperson for the Religious Right in the United States, called the prophet Mohammed "a terrorist" and acknowledged that Christians and Jews are "ganging up" on Muslims. How arrogant!
We cannot allow these voices to have the last word. We must speak.
In his memoirs, Elie Wiesel reminds us that the religious fanatic embodies Nietzche’s warning that certainty, not doubt, leads to madness. Driven by a passion for exactitude, Wiesel writes, a fanatic turns God given beauty into ugliness. Convinced that she or he is the sole possessor of the meaning of life, the fanatic who tries to play God finally comes to see God not as redeemer, judge, or ruler but as prisoner–the fanatic’s prisoner. So pernicious is the evil of religious fanaticism that the proponent of a faith founded on love can become an advocate for hate filled violence against all who are different.
We have to redefine patriotism. Wedding God and country has become a winning strategy for gaining support for almost any initiative. Within the mindset that implements that methodology, honest inquiry is considered hostility or disloyalty. We need a recovery of the kind of patriotism affirmed by William Butler Yeats in words that he penned in honor of a deceased friend, "He was a patriotic man who . . . gave his country not what it wanted but what it needed . . . a kind of perpetual last day, a sound of trumpets and a summoning up to judgment."
We must continue to work in the political process and cast an informed vote on Election Day. People who occupy elected offices and function in the halls of government are making too many major decisions about our lives for us not to have a voice in who works there.
By the way, God never showed up on television that week–not in Texas, not anywhere else, as far as I know. We are the ones that must address these challenges and move the nation toward civil and just solutions to nagging problems. Our labor is what counts. Can we do it?
Listen to the ancient poet-prophet. "Yes," is the message that I hear reverberating down through the centuries. You can stay faithful.
Sometimes when I hear that affirmation again as if for the first time, the words of a contemporary spiritual come to mind:
Lord, I don’t feel no ways tired.
I’ve come too far from where I’ve started from.
And nobody ever told me that the way would be easy.
But I don’t believe you brought me this far to leave me.On some days the exhilaration of that promise will inspire us to soar and to run, taking on every battle with vigor. But days come when exhilaration departs accompanied by energy. Then the whole scenario seems too daunting. The challenge strikes us as too much–the advocacy, the politics, the voting more than we can do. I know. I know. But please don’t quit.
Maybe today you are running, soaring. Great! But not all of us are there. Some of us look forward to a time when our involvement makes us soar or run again. In whichever condition you find yourself, please, please, don’t give up. To do what one person can do, to do what one congregation can do, to walk and not faint, that is faithfulness; that is enough.
I know you. And, I pray that we can and will walk together in faithfulness.
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