First Parish Bedford UU

“Just Enough to Win the Turkey”

A Sermon by the Rev. John Gibbons

delivered at The First Parish in Bedford, Massachusetts, Unitarian Universalist

on Sunday,  September 14, 2008





READING   from The Big Sort, by Bill Bishop

Beginning nearly thirty years ago, the people of this country unwittingly began a social experiment. Finding cultural comfort in “people like us,” we have migrated into ever-narrower communities and churches and political groups. We have created, and are creating, new institutions distinguished by their isolation and single-mindedness. We have replaced a belief in a nation with a trust in ourselves and our carefully chosen surroundings. And we have worked quietly and hard to remove any trace of the “constant clashing of opinions” from daily life. It was a social revolution, one that was both profound and, because it consisted of people simply going about their lives, entirely unnoticed. In this time, we have reshaped our economies, transformed our businesses, both created and decimated our cities, and altered institutions of faith and fellowship that have withstood centuries. Now more isolated than ever in our private lives, cocooned with our fellows, we approach public life with the sensibility of customers who are always right. “Tailor-made” has worked so well for industry and social networking sit4es, for subdivisions and churches, we expect it from our government, too. But democracy doesn’t seem to work that way.



THOUGHTS TO PONDER

“Can two walk together, except they be agreed?”  - Amos 3:3

“We do not need to think alike to love alike.”  - Transylvanian forbear, Francis David



SERMON

In late August, I had the privilege of officiating at the Cleveland, Ohio memorial service of our longest-tenured member, Jeptha Wade – a second memorial took place here last Saturday.  Jeptha was a lawyer, a trustee of Boston museums, and the namesake of Jeptha Homer Wade who, in the mid 19th century, founded Western Union and many Cleveland institutions, including the cemetery where he and now his great great grandson are now buried.  Our Jeptha’s ashes, by the way – were buried, at his request, in his well-worn business briefcase, a 50-year-old gift from his wife.

At the cemetery, there is an obelisk to Jeptha Homer Wade, across the hillside from another obelisk to John D. Rockefeller, adjacent to the memorial to President James Garfield, and near the smaller gravestone of Ray Chapman, shortstop for the Cleveland Indians and the last person to be killed by a pitch in the major leagues – in 1920.  Admirers have decorated his grave with bats, balls and gloves.

Well, also in the cemetery is the Wade Family Chapel, a small granite temple whose interior was designed by the famous Louis Tiffany: great biblical murals in mosaic and a stained glass window of the resurrection.  I was given a rare tour of the cellar of the Chapel, and there I saw an odd mechanism of ropes and pulleys.  It was explained that, in the old days, one’s casket was placed on the altar, but lowered, flush-to-the-floor and out of view.  When the minister got to the part in the funeral service where he talked of eternal life, men in the cellar would haul the ropes so that the casket would rise to give visual proof of the resurrection.  It was there, front and center, that Jep’s briefcase was the focal point; but alas it was not hoisted aloft.

I tell you these things, first of all, just in true appreciation of the diverse privileges of ministry – it’s a great gig, Karen – but the example of the hoisted casket, in particular – causes me to wonder yet again what it is that is going on in the world of churches and religion?  Could anything but giggles have greeted the appearance of the casket?  Where is the line between theatrical entertainment and religion?

It will not surprise any of you that I, in particular, may wonder at the boundaries of entertainment and religion; but, truly, at this time of year I wonder keenly what it is that is worth your time sitting in these pews, or my breath?  What difference are we trying to make; what are we trying to accomplish or be?

Fundamentally, I believe that we are here to change our lives and to change the world.  That actually is our mission statement and what we say we believe.  The liberal church carries a vision of people who can become more thoughtful, more mindful, more heart-centered, more compassionate, more generous, more inclusive, and more walk than talk.  We carry a vision of a world that can be more healthy, more whole, more just.  We believe in human agency, that what we do or fail to do – you and I – actually makes a difference.

If, thus, we are to be true to this faith there must be some uncomfortable awareness that neither we nor our world is what we would have them be.   We need be uncomfortably aware that there is some “tooth” – as said Emily Dickinson – “that nibbles at our soul.” 

For the most part, I’m sad to say, I see us doing most of the nibbling – on Doritos and info snacks and political tid-bits, and spiritual hors d’oeuvres; not enough of substance; and not much seems to be nibbling at our souls.

Now, please understand that I know we are here to comfort the afflicted as well as to afflict the comfortable.  We are sometimes seriously afflicted and in pain and we do try to be of comfort.  But when I look at American culture generally, and Unitarian Universalist culture, including that of First Parish, specifically, I see us hunkering down into increasingly stratified and segmented communities of like-mindedness, similarity and mutual admiration, utterly capitulating to the idol worship of entertaining consumerist materialist principalities. 

I don’t recall the last time with you that I’ve railed against idol worship, but that’s what it is.

Karen read to you from Bill Bishop’s book, The Big Sort:  “Beginning nearly 30 years ago, the people of this country unwittingly began a social experiment.  Finding cultural comfort in “people like us,” we have migrated into ever-narrower communities and churches and political groups.  We have created, and are creating, new institutions distinguished by their isolation and single-mindedness.  We have replaced a belief in a nation with a trust in ourselves and our carefully chosen surroundings.  And we have worked quietly and hard to remove any trace of the ‘constant clashing of opinions’ from daily life.  (That’s a phrase used by the anti-federalist writer Brutus who disparaged the federalist ideal of diversity and cautioned that only like-minded communities – without the ‘constant clashing of opinions’ could endure.  That was a losing argument in the creation of the American experiment, but now it has resurfaced, not in argument, but in reality.)  Bishop says, “Now more isolated than ever in our private lives, cocooned with our fellows, we approach public life with the sensibility of customers who are always right.”

There’s a lot of demographic analysis that went into this book.  In county after county across the country, those that went somewhat Democratic in the 1976 election voted Democratic by a landslide in 2004.  The same for counties that voted Republican.

Economically, culturally and politically we have migrated into communities of like-mindedness.  What is distressing about this is that research also demonstrates that “mixed company moderates; like minded company polarizes.  Heterogeneous communities restrain group excesses; homogeneous communities march toward the extremes.”   I do not need to tell you that ours is a polarized nation.

It’s hard to be a moderate Democrat or a moderate Republican because you’re always afraid that others will call you names.

In like-minded communities, we become more focused on the ways we differ from others and less attentive to the common good.  Our sensitivity to differences becomes more acute while our willingness to compromise is diminished.

The clustering of like-minded people, in other words, polarizes (“How can the polls be so close when I don’t know a single person voting for McCain?”); like-mindedness encourages the extremes – on both sides – and tears us apart.     

This phenomenon of like-mindedness fostering extremism has been known, by the way, since the time of St. Paul who, before his conversion, was extreme in his persecution of Christians because it served him well in a homogenous Jewish culture.  “Beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it…(because I) profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals…being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.”

As we migrate to communities of like-mindedness, we become less and less able to hear the other side of any argument – because there is no argument.  We are soothed to familiar points of view and “people simply don’t believe what they see or hear if it runs counter to their existing beliefs.”

“It’s basic social psychology lab research,” says one analyst.  “You show people who favor Israel and those who favor Palestine the same news coverage of the intifada.  Both groups think the media is biased against them.  There is a differential evaluation.  They both see the same stuff, but they draw very different conclusions.”

Another example is the ways people listen to presidential debates.  The finding is that “voters watch debates in order to reinforce what they already believe.  They listen for the parts of the debate that favor their candidate…and tune out the parts where their candidate does a poor job.  This is especially true when people watch debates with like-minded companions.”

Now when it comes, say, to people like us, you’d think that “well-educated Americans see themselves as worldly, nuanced, and comfortable with difference.”  Education is presumed to nurture an appreciation of diversity but, in fact, “The more educated Americans become – and the richer – the less likely they are to discuss politics with those who have different points of view…. Americans who are poor and nonwhite are more likely than those who are rich and white to be exposed to political disagreement.  In the United States today, people who haven’t graduated from high school have the most diverse groups of political discussion mates.  Those who have suffered through graduate school have the most homogenous political lives.”

The Big Sort book pays particular attention to churches.  “The goal of the church in other times was to transfigure the social tenets of those who came through the door.  Now people go to a church not for how it might change their beliefs, but for how their precepts will be reconfirmed.”  “I find very little evidence that churches are really transforming their congregations,” a researcher is quoted.  “It’s really quite the reverse.  Ministers depend on pleasing a particular congregation for their longevity.  The last thing they want to do is offend those people or try to transform their viewpoint….It’s conformity all the way.”

It used to be that churches were thought supposed to go out into the world and do good things, help members and strangers and change people and change the world.  What we have seen in more recent years, however, is the triumph of a different view of church growth and mission – and that is that churches grow by reaching out to more and more people – not people who might challenge or be different than us – but by reaching out to more “people like us.”  There’s even a particular church growth specialist, an entrepreneur: his name was David McGavran and, starting in the 1950’s, he declared that any church – any religion – that asked people to abandon their tribe, caste or class would fail.  “Men do not join churches where services are conducted in a language they do not understand, wear better clothes, or where members have a noticeably higher degree of education, wear better clothes, and are obviously of a different sort.”   Think about that the next time you see Rick Warren in his Hawaiian shirts; he is a disciple of McGavran. 

Well, you get the idea.  So what is the alternative and what does this mean for us?  The book cites some “cross-cutting” examples:  There’s a herding tribe called the Nuer on the Upper Nile.  Among other things, the tribe prohibits not just marriages within one’s own family but their rules “forbid, under penalty of disease, accident, and death, a man to marry any woman of his clan, or any woman with whom relationship can be traced in any line up to six generations.”  This is a requirement that results in marriages across enemy tribe lines – and thus connects all portions of the larger Nuer nation.  The various clans had to stay friendly or risk the decline in available marriage partners.  Marriage widened the web of friendship, or at least association.   Among some African tribes there is a saying, “They are our enemies; we marry them.”

Perhaps you can relate to that.

The author of The Big Sort also tells an off-color story of the type once favored by old-fashioned politicians who took pride, not in their ability to galvanize or polarize their base but to pragmatically and sometimes inconsistently do whatever was necessary to get a particular and often good thing done for the common good. 

Now the punch line of this sermon is that we’ve got our work cut out for ourselves if we are to buck the trend to like-mindedness and that, in lots of ways, we must aspire to be a counter-cultural institution; and now remember that according to the cultural trend, ministers are supposed to avoid offense and, so, if I’m to be counter-cultural, well, I just have to rub you the wrong way and so this is my best shot today:

Well, to set the stage, it seems that Governor Coombs of Kentucky was going to send an aide to Washington to seek funding for an important state project, and before he left the governor gave him just one piece of advice.  The governor said, “Show them just enough to win the turkey.”  Seeing a blank look on his aide’s face, the governor told this yarn:

On a yearly trade day in one mountain town, there would be a contest of sorts.  The young men would trail off behind a Main Street building and open their trousers; the gentleman with the largest display of manhood would win a live turkey.  One trade day, the contest proceeded as tradition dictated.  The competition was undecided until the judges reached a young man who slowly revealed his entry.  The man had made only a partial disclosure when the judges acclaimed him clearly to be the most prodigious of that year’s lot.  The man tucked the feathered and flapping turkey prize under his arm and walked back onto Main Street.  The contest was no secret, of course, and when the man’s wife saw her husband with the telltale turkey, she shrieked.  How could you have done such a thing?  “Don’t worry, hon,” the young man answered.  “I just showed them enough to win the turkey.”

In other words, the governor was advising his aide not to talk too much, don’t tell those people in Washington everything!  Just enough to win the turkey.

Now I imagine that you’ve heard about as much as you’re going to remember, and I can end this sermon and possibly my career right now.

But allow me, please, to attempt some closure.  I believe that the mission of liberal religion and of Unitarian Universalism and of this First Parish in particular is to change our lives and our world.  That’s what we say.

What we do – along with most Americans but probably even in greater excess due to our class and our education and our isolation  - is to migrate toward like-mindedness.  

We need to strengthen our mission, our identity as a counter-cultural institution.  

On Thursday, Diane and I met with a group of ministers upstairs and John Buehrens, our minister in Needham, recalled his years as minister to the Tennessee Valley UU Church in Knoxville – where the August shootings happened.  That church has always had a counter-cultural identity, John said, from the civil rights days when they sponsored inter-racial camps and the Klan blew out their windows with shotguns to their present day affirmation of civil marriage rights for all people.

I believe that the increasing pace of economic, political, cultural and religious sorting and segmentation demands that we do more to affirm economic, political, cultural and religious diversities.  We need to hear from and get to know more people outside our tribe and caste and class, more Muslims, more Christians and Jews and humanists; more immigrants and economists and anthropologists and gay people and veterans and pacifists, more hockey moms and community organizers, more offensive ministers, and more people who are both wealthier and poorer and who think and dress and experience the world differently from ourselves.  Our affirmative action program for Republicans, my friends, is in a shambles.  We need to get to know our enemies and maybe marry them. 

We need to get less holier-than-thou, more mixed up, with a constant clashing of opinions, and sometimes we need be quiet enough to listen. 

We envision ourselves and our world transformed, changed, different. We and our world can be better and more fair.  Let us keep our eyes on that prize.

Which reminds me.  There’s plenty for us to be proud of at First Parish, but we really don’t need to show it all off.  We need show just enough to win the turkey.