Sermons
Crown Thy Good
A sermon preached by the Reverend Diane Teichert
First Parish Unitarian Universalist-Canton, MA
May 26, 2002
Over on Turnpike Street, as you're heading from Canton into Stoughton,
there was (last I drove that way) a huge patriotic billboard. I don't
go that way often enough to know for sure when it went up or that it's
still there, but I imagine that it went up in the wake of September
11th and that it's still there
First time I saw it, I felt agitated and uneasy.
Do you know which billboard I mean? Against a brilliant blue sky, flies
a billowing "stars and stripes." Two familiar slogans are
blazoned across. One reads "In God We Trust" and the other
"United We Stand." I cannot now remember which comes first,
but the layout makes perfectly clear that the two slogans go together,
hand in hand1 .
But, they don't belong together at all. We Americans don't all
trust in God. We don't all even believe in God. I consider myself
a person of faith, but I don't trust or believe in the "God of
our fathers" which, I am quite sure, is the God extolled on the
billboard, the God whose "almighty hand" is praised in a triumphant-even
militaristic-hymn that will no doubt be sung in many Protestant churches
this Memorial Day.
Trusting in God is not what unites us as Americans. Rather,
I think we are united by our steadfast commitment to each person's right
to trust or not, to believe or not, in God and to mean different things
when we use that word. In fact, I would say that one of the clearest
principles on which Americans do stand united is our freedom
to trust in God or not, as we each see fit-we stand united in, among
other important principles, our religious freedom-not in our trust in
God.
Did you know that "In God We Trust" was not always our national
motto? Congress only adopted it in 1956. For 180 years prior, our motto
was "E Pluribus Unum" which means "out of many, one."
Surely, the original was a much more useful slogan for these times of
religious diversity and conflict than the new one.
Our motto, and that billboard, have it wrong.
So does the Pledge of Allegiance.
Did you know that the phrase "under God" was only added to
the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, more than fifty years after the pledge
was first written and twelve years after it was officially adopted by
Congress? Didn't anyone in Congress challenge the addition of those
two words as a violation of our Constitutional right to religious freedom?
The original words penned in 1892 were "I pledge allegiance to
my flag and the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all."
According to the author of The Pledge of Allegiance: A Centennial
History, 1892-1992 [John W. Baer] 2,
the pledge was written by Frances Bellamy, a Baptist minister in Boston
who lost his pulpit due to his Christian Socialist views and then worked
for a widely-read youth magazine in which the pledge was first published.
Bellamy wrote the pledge for the National Education Association's nation-wide
public school celebration of the 400th anniversary of the landing of
Christopher Columbus. It accompanied the flag-raising ceremony on that
day.
Bellamy said of his choice of words,
… it began as an intensive communing with salient points of
our national history, from the Declaration of Independence onwards;
with the makings of the Constitution...with the meaning of the Civil
War; with the aspiration of the people...
The true reason for allegiance to the Flag is the 'republic for which
it stands.' ...And what does that vast thing, the Republic mean? It
is the concise political word for the Nation - the One Nation which
the Civil War was fought to prove. To make that One Nation idea clear,
we must specify that it is indivisible, as Webster and Lincoln used
to repeat in their great speeches. And its future?
Just here arose the temptation of the historic slogan of the French
Revolution which meant so much to Jefferson and his friends, 'Liberty,
equality, fraternity.' No, that would be too fanciful, too many thousands
of years off in realization. But we as a nation do stand square on
the doctrine of liberty and justice for all...
Some of us are old enough to have grown up reciting the Pledge of Allegiance
every day in school. As memorization often goes, we kids sometimes didn't
have the words just right. For example, if you were like me, you just
couldn't figure out how the nation, the country in which we lived, could
be "invisible" since we could see it everywhere!
When I was young and reciting the pledge, it by then included the words
"under God." I didn't think about, or perhaps I didn't even
know about, Americans who did not believe in God. But, I wonder now
how would it have felt to be the Unitarian kid in the class, whose parents
were atheists or humanists, or the Chinese immigrant whose family were
Buddhists, and each and every day have to recite something that conflicted
with what your parents taught you? How do our children feel about
it today?
Millions of Americans do not believe they are "under" God.
Some find God within their own hearts. Others believe they are part
of-not under-a sacred universe. Still others do not believe in God at
all. Yet everyday the religious beliefs of these Americans are violated…in
schools, in public meetings, anywhere the Pledge is recited.
Should our government tell its people what to believe about God? Is
God more than something to be "under?" Is religious liberty
promoted or damaged by government endorsement of a certain theology?
Would you support a return to the original Pledge of Allegiance? Why?
Why not?
Short of going back to the original, those who wish to acknowledge
the religious diversity among Americans today, can elect to just not
say the "under God" words. Some may want to abbreviate
the pledge even further, starting with "I pledge allegiance to…"
but then skip right over everything else to the ending, so it would
be "I pledge allegiance …to liberty and justice for all."
Immediately after September 11th, use of patriotic language and symbols
was on the rise, especially the American flag. There was even one out
on the First Parish front lawn for several weeks, next to the memorial
to those who died on that day. Most of us don't even notice that one
is hanging here in the sanctuary from the balcony, though the United
Nations flag flies higher, reminding us visually that, as we sang earlier
this morning, "other hearts in other lands are beating with hopes
and dreams as true and high as [ours]."
Among Americans there are diverse emotional responses to the image
of the American flag. But that's ok, no one is telling us what the flag
has to mean to us, other than it is the flag of our country. Visual
symbols work flexibly that way much better than words in pledges and
mottos do.
Our diverse emotional responses to the flag originate in our own personal
histories, perhaps especially our histories in regards to the wars in
our lifetimes. The flag fluttering in the breeze signifies freedom to
many and to others security, to give just two examples of qualities
especially desired in the aftermath of September 11th. Many of us displayed
flags on our lapels, windshields, bumpers and front porches and took
comfort and courage from them.
But, to me the flag is as much a symbol of oppression as it is of freedom,
security, comfort and courage. In part this is so because the American
flag reminds me of how years ago I felt rejected and misunderstood by
that other flag-associated slogan, "Love it or leave it."
To me, it was love of my country that called me to question its policies
during the Vietnam War era. But, to those who waved the flag and shouted
that slogan, love of country meant one must support its policies no
matter what.
For some American families-the ones that experienced a cultural, political
and emotional divide at the time of the Vietnam War-the words and symbols
associated with patriotism became painful reminders of those differences,
especially between fathers and sons. One such family was that of James
Carroll, local columnist and author, who tells his story in a memoir,
An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War that Came Between
Us. Yet, in that memoir is a poignant story of the way American
bedrock freedoms can bridge those painful differences.
James Carroll's father was Lieutenant General Joseph F. Carroll, director
of the Defense Intelligence Agency through much of the Vietnam War,
a lawyer, a former FBI man who as head of the DIA helped choose the
bombing targets in Vietnam, a man who had dedicated his life to the
military. James was one of four sons, the one who became a Catholic
priest to fulfill the dream his father had had for himself but abandoned.
But, James' vocation as a priest brought him into direct conflict with
his father, as he aligned himself with radical Catholic war resistors.
His brother Brian would become an FBI agent assigned to track down draft
dodgers, one of whom was another brother, Dennis. The family was deeply
divided.
The story of how freedom bridged their divisions involved not James
but his brother Dennis. After a couple years in exile, a fugitive from
the draft, estranged from their parents, Dennis decides to return to
the U.S. and face the music of the Selective Service Board. He figures,
and James concurs, that the climate had changed so that he might win
conscientious objector status even though his reasons were moral not
religious. He believed U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam was wrong,
whether God existed or not.
Against James' objections, the estranged Dennis asks his father, the
three star general and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency,
to be his lawyer before the Selective Service Board. Amazingly, Joseph
Carroll agrees. He studies the law carefully and helps Dennis prepare
a statement, "a forthright definition of the war's immorality and
of a citizen's obligation to oppose it." (p. 247).
For the hearing, Joseph Carroll wears full dress uniform, his three
stars matching the three stars of the Selective Service director. Dennis
reads the statement and then is asked to leave the room, whereupon they
ask his father for his views. He responds, and it is this I find to
be such a testament to the bridging capacity of the principle of freedom
not to mention a testimony to Joseph Carroll's incredible authenticity,
The right to conscientious objection is basic to the American idea.
The board's task is only to determine if the application for exemption
from military service was authentically based on conscience. I am
here today not because I agree with what my son has just said-obviously,
wearing this uniform, I don't-but because I know with absolute certitude
that his position is sincerely held, prudently arrived at, and an
act, if I might add, of heroic integrity. (p. 248)
Compare that patriot's conviction with that of our current Attorney
General, John Ashcroft, who said the following last December about those
who were questioning the war on terrorism. "To those who…
scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty; my message
is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists-for they erode our national
unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies,
and pause to America's friends..."
"Phantoms of lost liberty…" ?
Here we have the Attorney General, the chief law enforcement officer
at the federal level, top champion of the U.S. constitution, ridiculing
those whose conscience requires them to stand up for the very freedoms
that secure the "American way of life" that the war on terrorism
purportedly defends.
We have already seen this morning how one important freedom, freedom
of religion, was eroded in the 1950's by the addition of "under
God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and the substitution of "In
God We Trust" for "E Pluribus Unum" as our National Motto.
Unless words are unimportant and falsehoods ignored, that is no "phantom"
lost liberty. Unless words are unimportant and falsehoods ignored, that
is a real lost liberty.
Since the 1950's, it is said that the United States has become the
most religiously diverse nation on the earth. Our need is now greater
than ever for patriotic language that brings us together. But these
phrases actually divide us. For it would be impossible to achieve an
American consensus on the meaning of the word "god," never
mind unity standing on the idea that it is that "God" under
which we all live and in which we all trust.
In a few moments, we will be singing "America the Beautiful,"
yet another national treasure in which "God" does appear.
But at least it is a petition for a higher power's help, not an affirmation
of belief like the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Motto.
It's my deep hope that all those who are excluded by "in God we
trust" and "under God"-all those atheists and agnostics,
all those believers in the goddess or in many gods, all those who find
God, not over, but within themselves and others and all around them
in the natural world-it's my deep hope that they-and we-that all
can sing "America the Beautiful," assenting to the love of
country that it conveys without quarrel with the source of help it implores.
For me, "America the Beautiful" expresses much of what I
love most about my country-its physical beauty and the abundant harvests
it produces, the fine qualities of its pilgrims and of its heroes to
which any of us may aspire, its commitment to freedom, its dream of
cities undimmed by human tears, and most of all that brotherhood-which
I take to mean fairness, equity, kindness, justice, and compassion in
human affairs-and most of all that brotherhood might be our crowning
glory. So may it be. Amen.
- A November 4, 2001 sermon by
the Rev. Ken Sawyer, who had seen signs bearing these slogans, reminded
me of the billboard I'd seen and stimulated my thinking about patriotic
language.
- www.vineyard.net/vineyard/history/pledge.htm
