E very one of us in here this morning has experienced the abuse of power. Perhaps it was a boss, a teacher, a principal, a commanding officer. Someone in a position of authority abused that authority and did us harm. I have been fortunate in my life. I have not experienced police brutality. I have not been imprisoned for expressing a critical opinion. Thank heavens, I was never the victim of sexual abuse as a child. But, like all of you, I have been the victim of misused authority. That feeling of being mistreated is powerful and bitter. I can still recall, thirty years after the fact, a professor in graduate school who made my life hell with crazy, shifting, unreasonable demands. In the great scheme of things, it was a small tyranny. Yet I still remember, and when I remember I can still feel a bit of the anger and frustration I felt then. You have your own stories. For a moment (and just for a brief moment), recall a time someone abused their power over you. It is a poisonous feeling. (You can let it go now!)
When we look at our lives as members of the larger society, abuse of power is everywhere. Recently there were headlines about the FBI misusing their access to private information. We are awash now with stories of the Department of Justice bringing partisan politics into the firing of federal prosecutors. There will be fresh stories of the abuse of power next week and the week after. And these stories seem pretty tame when we look at the abuse of power in the world. We are awash with tales of killings, torture, corruption and economic exploitation perpetrated by people in positions of authority.
Yet there is another side, a side we can easily overlook. Just as I am certain that every one of us has suffered at the hands of someone abusing his or her power, I am also certain that every one of us has benefitted hundreds of times from people using their power for good. I am still grateful to kind officials in California and in Spain who cut through red tape when my son was desperately ill. I spoke a moment ago of a professor in graduate school who abused his authority. Yet there have been at least a dozen professors in my life who used their power to open doors for me. I am sure that when you look at your own experience, you can come up with a list of people who used their power to help you and to help others.
Not only has each of us benefitted from people in authority who used their power to do good, but we need to remember that none of that good could have been done without power. The teacher who helped us, the boss who gave us an opportunity, the physician who made sure we got the treatment we needed, needed power to make good things happen.
Power. It is all around us. Every single human relationship involves a power dynamic. Our attitude toward power profoundly shapes our lives. As our reading this morning tells us, power is frightening. Marianne Williamson’s poem reminds us that we have a deep fear of our own power.
When we think of religious words, we tend to think of love, forgiveness, compassion, awe, meditation, prayer, and charity. Power is not usually on the short list. It ought to be. How we deal with issues of power will do much to determine our life as a congregation and our future as a religious movement. This is especially true for us religious liberals. We are a people who are profoundly conflicted about power and authority. We religious progressives are wary and skeptical about power. Sometimes that skepticism goes over the edge into a kind of paranoia. We are, I believe, profoundly afraid of power.
When we look at our history, it is no wonder we are wary of authority. Ours is a movement born as a rebellion against religious authority. Not only that, our religious forebears suffered mightily at the hands the powerful. Our story is a story of surviving oppression, a story of heretics seeking freedom.
The story of Jesus is a story of a religious visionary who was executed because he threatened the established religious and political order.
As the early Christian movement grew and spread out from its origins as a Jewish movement, there was a flowering of different ideas. Some of the early Christians thought Jesus was divine, others did not. Some of them took the gospel stories literally, some saw them as symbolic. Some looked to teachers as religious authorities, some believed the ultimate authority lay within each person. About half of the earliest Christians accepted the doctrine of the Trinity, about half did not.
Early Christianity is better described as a plural: Christianities. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, all of this changed. An official religion demanded one set of teachings. Emperor Constantine called a council of bishops at Nicea in the year 325. They debated for weeks and hammered out a creed. This is the origin of the Nicean Creed. The trinitarians won. Those who believed Jesus was a god won. Everyone else, including our distant religious ancestors, lost. They were branded heretics. Their writings were destroyed. In the last half century a number of suppressed writings, long hidden away, have emerged.
More than a thousand years later, many of the old ideas came out of hiding. The new printing press made possible the spread of ideas. New heretics emerged to challenge the authority of the church. One of them, Michael Servetus, was hunted for decades and eventually burned at the stake for arguing against the doctrine of the Trinity.
Later, our direct religious forebears again rebelled against the existing authorities. The early Unitarians sought to open religion to new perspectives from scholarship and the sciences. They advocated religious freedom. Early Unitarians wanted nothing to do with creeds. After all, it was the insistence on a creed that had caused the problem in the first place. They wanted nothing to do with the rigid hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. They insisted on local autonomy and democracy.
The Universalists rebelled against the image of a God who is angry, vindictive and judgmental. They, too, advocated religious freedom. They, too, wanted nothing to do with bishops and popes.
We are a rebellious lot. We are also people who kept coming out on the short side of power struggles.
Our deep fear of power did not arise yesterday. Our fear of power and authority is deep in our religious DNA. Our passionate commitment to democracy and local autonomy of churches also has deep historical roots. Our democratic tradition is a great strength, and it is absolutely central to our religious identity.
Alas, strengths have a way of becoming weaknesses. Our distrust of authority has preserved a wonderful tradition of the free church and congregational independence. But our tradition has a dark side. The dark side of our tradition takes our great strength and, taking that strength too far, turns it into a weakness.
The history of Universalism in America is a case study in a strength becoming a weakness. Universalism began at the end of the 18th century as a tiny movement with a liberating message. Universalists preached a message of hope. The dominant theology at the time was a Calvinism that preached of an angry God who stood ready to condemn the vast majority of people to hell. The Universalists preached of a loving God who would would save all people.
The movement grew like wildfire. Its liberating message was about hope, not hell. Universalist churches sprouted up everywhere. Universalists were the first denomination to ordain a woman minister. They were full of energy and passion. There are no hard numbers, but estimates are that there were several hundred thousand Universalists in the early 19th century. Universalists were an important force in American religion.
Sadly, by the time the Universalists and the Unitarians merged in 1961, there were fewer than 40,000 adult Universalists. The number of Universalist churches in the country was down to only 125, a small fraction of what had existed a century before.
What happened? How did they, how did we, go from vibrant strength to pitiful weakness? There are several reasons. The great demographic shift to urbanization was a factor. A failure to adapt to a changing religious climate was a factor. But another major factor was that the Universalists were an organizational disaster. They were so afraid of authority and power that they could never do anything in a coordinated way. Our Universalist forebears shot themselves in the foot. They never could learn to trust anyone to act on their behalf. The result was paralysis.
I cannot help but imagine what might have been. These were good, compassionate, forward looking people. How many more lives might they have touched? What liberating influence might they might have exerted in society? But they let their fear of power and authority hold them back. They sacrificed their movement on the altar of independence. What a shame.
I fear that today we are in danger of reliving that history. We have so very much to offer. We are a religious movement uniquely suited to be the religious home millions are seeking: a religious home that affirms compassion, human dignity, and acceptance of human diversity. We offer spiritual depth without sacrificing human learning. We are committed to work for peace and justice. We accept the wisdom of all religious traditions and offer a place for inter-religious dialogue and understanding.
Sadly, we fall far short of our potential. We could be, we should be, so much more than we are. What holds us back?
I am convinced that one reason we fall short is our fear of power and authority. Sometimes our fear becomes paranoia. I sometimes tell a funny but sad story from my time in seminary. I attended Starr King School for the MInistry, our seminary in Berkeley. Starr King is a very small school; the student body is about the size of our choir. Like all schools, ours had a student organization. Most of what it did was plan social events. Part of that was arranging for child care. Probably the most important function was to maintain the the supply of snacks in the school kitchen. During my second year there was a big debate at the student meeting about whether there should be a president. The worry was that having a student president was too much of a concentration of power and perpetuated a hierarchical and patriarchal model of power. (I am not making this up!) So instead the students voted to have three people share the presidency. It was, predictably, a mess. It became a crisis when the snack bar was not restocked. Now, this is a silly story. It is also a very sad story. We were unable to trust someone enough to take leadership of arranging for child care and restocking the snacks. We were afraid to trust someone, to empower someone, to act on our behalf. These former students who were so afraid of any authority are now ministers in our movement.
I believe our fear of power also leads us into a kind of idolatry. Like all of you, I believe deeply in democracy. Yet I have always been bewildered by our practice of tedious town hall style meetings, both in local congregations and at our national General Assemblies. A typical congregational meeting struggles to get a quorum. At JUC, a quorum is fifteen percent of our membership. So, at this typical congregational meeting a small minority is present. And this minority is not a representative minority. It is a lot harder for people with kids to come, so the people at the meeting tend to be a lot older than the congregation at large. People who hate long meetings also stay away. I have seen meetings drag on, with heated arguments about such things as moving a couple of hundred dollars in a budget that totals hundreds of thousands of dollars or making insignificant editorial changes in a resolution. By the time a vote finally is taken, a number of people have given up and left. Likely as not, a quorum no longer exists, but no one asks. When it is all over six or seven percent of the congregation can control the outcome. Yet we delude ourselves that we have a democratic process. Nonsense. We have the form of democracy without its substance. Some of the most undemocratic decisions are those made at congregational meetings and at our General Assembly. In these gatherings decisions are made by a self selected tiny minority.
A decision made by a carefully selected board of trustees, a board that represents the diversity of the congregation and that has taken the time to gather information and deliberate on an issue, is more democratic. It is more democratic because it represents the interests of the congregation as a whole. I am not suggesting that we not have congregational meetings. They are necessary for major decisions and setting priorities. And they are a necessary check and balance. I just want us to take a critical look at how we deal with issues of power.
This morning I want to challenge us to take a fresh look at power. I want to challenge us to imagine ourselves not paralyzed by fear of power, but rather to imagine ourselves as a powerful force for good. Let us remember that power is not a thing; power is a relationship. I want relationships in which we empower one another. I want us to use our power in a way that is consistent with our most precious religious values. It all begins with creating loving, collaborative, caring, honest relationships. When we care for one another and share a commitment to our principles, we learn to trust one another. We learn to trust ourselves.
Trust is a precious thing. In today’s chalice lighting we heard Sara speak of learning about trust here at her church home. When we learn to trust each other, magic happens. If I trust you and you trust me, we can accomplish so much more. All of the best things we do as a congregation—from pastoral care to social action—we do because we trust one another.
Effective congregations all have strong leaders. Legitimate leaders are not tyrants. On the contrary, good religious leaders are servants. They should be the congregation’s most trusted people, people deeply committed to the church’s mission. Good leaders share power. They empower others. Something wonderful and beautiful occurs when we say to someone: “I trust you to do this. I think you are the best person to teach this class or chair this committee or represent us at that gathering.” When we learn to empower one another, we don’t lose power, we gain power. Trust unleashes our energy and our passion.
This morning’s reading is a challenge to each of us individually but also to all of us together. Can we face our fear of power? Can we learn to trust? Can we learn to select good leaders and empower them to act on our behalf? I am not suggesting that we trust blindly or that we ignore issues of accountability.
I am suggesting that our fear of power has not served us. So many people are hungry for what our liberal faith can offer. The world is desperate for a religious movement that creates peace instead of war, love instead of hate, understanding instead of ignorance.
We can be that religious movement. But we can only do it if we overcome our fear. We must take the power that is ours and use it.
Come, let us learn to trust each other. Our playing small does not serve the world. Let us not fear our power. Let us seize it together. Together let us become an irresistible power for good.
Amen.