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Hana Matsuri Flower Festival:
Holding Religions Accountable in a Global Community

A Sermon by the Rev. Susan Manker-Seale
April 7, 2002

The baby Buddha statue over which you poured sweet tea this morning is one my father brought from Japan. He's never found one here in the States. The statue depicts the Buddha the way he was supposedly born, at the age of six, one hand pointing up toward Heaven and the other down toward the earth. If I'm remembering correctly, he acquired the statue during the International Association for Religious Freedom, or IARF, conference when it was held in Japan, the same conference I'm planning to attend in Budapest this summer as part of my sabbatical. The Japanese clippers I used to cut the flowers that decorate the hana mido this morning came from the only IARF conference I attended and helped plan, which was in 1987 in Palo Alto, California. The Japanese gave them to those of us who signed up for the flower-arranging workshop they led.

The Japanese have developed a new form of Buddhism called Rissho Kosei Kai, and the main thing I remember about it is that they focus on creating small groups that support each other, not unlike the Finding Heart groups. The Rissho Kosei Kai have become hugely popular and are the largest religion participating in the IARF, I believe. I expect I will meet many of them in Budapest, and find out what things we hold in common in our advocacy for religious freedom in the world.

Today, we work together for a common goal--this with people who were our enemies sixty years ago. Last June, Curtiss, Ben, Kat and I visited Pearl Harbor and saw both the old movie in the visitor's center as well as the new movie in the theater. I was impressed with the care with which the directors and writers treated blame and the realities of war. The directors were probably a Japanese-American team.

My son has been reading Shogun for school. Since he was interested in Buddhism and things Japanese, we suggested it for him. I've been remembering some of the story, but mainly the perspective of the Englishman toward the "barbaric" Japanese, and how the Japanese finally civilized the clearly barbaric Englishman in the end. It took a long time and a lot of patience. I remember the test of civility was that the Englishman could pick up a single grain of rice with his chopsticks!

These lessons are there for all of us to see if we wish to pay attention--all of us except those in the world who are isolated from cross-cultural and international experience. Lesson 1: The people who were once our enemies will be our friends in the future--that path is well-traveled. Lesson 2: There has been a tendency in history for people to think their own culture or religion or race is superior, and only through the test of time and intercultural exchange are we able to see what our ancestors denied. In what ways are we blinded by our ego-centrism today?

There has always been intercultural exchange, but never have we seen a global community arising as it has been these last hundred years, and especially in the last fifty. We have instant real-time communication around the world. We are recognizing our interdependence in a critical way, both ecologically and economically. We are exposed to different ways of doing and being, expressing and perceiving. We are realizing our differences, and searching for our commonalities that will enable all of us to live in peace and harmony and justice in the world. We are doing these things, and more, and yet, we are still at war all over the globe, with human suffering sky-high, not to mention that of the animals and the earth itself. And religions are entirely to blame.

I actually tried to erase that last sentence, but my hand wouldn't let me. "Religions are entirely to blame." I had to take a moment to think about that one, so if you space out, I'll understand. We all know religions have been responsible for much of the evil in the world. Take the inquisition and the holocaust for two examples out of thousands, maybe millions, in history. Religions have also been responsible for much of what is good. We know that within the same religious tradition, within the same religious scripture, within the same religious story, are teachings for both good and evil. Warriors and power-mongers can find justification for their acts just as easily as peace-makers and justice-advocates. Seek and ye shall find, so they say, only it's a two-sided coin. What one can justify, one's enemy can justify as well.

The problem as I see it is that religions were created in a different time for a different purpose than we need today. They are culturally-based, in a way that seems ignorant of the diversity of peoples in the world. They claim to be universal, and yet are shaped to uplift a particular people over others and to deny the different outlooks and stories of other peoples. I'm mostly thinking of our Jewish-Christian-Muslim track of religion, being most familiar with them.

These same religions, though, hold eons of universal truth embedded within the ego-centric nature of the stories. They do teach good ways to live and to get along with others and the earth. There is deep and essential wisdom there. As much as religion has been used as a justification for oppression, torture, usurpation, and war, religion has been used to teach respect, compassion, generosity, and peace.

To survive as positive forces in the world, religions are going to have to adapt to the new age. When people confront the old ego-centrism of religion, they can either deny its existence, or leave the fold. The entire reformation was about people leaving the Catholic fold after fifteen hundred years of evil and good. Today, they say half of the people of the United States are not members of a religious organization. Because so many religions refuse to acknowledge the reality of today's world, they lose their parishioners and lose the chance to share what is really good about religion.

Yesterday I witnessed a heart-rending example of someone struggling to stay in the fold. I participated as faculty in the Interfaith Seminary ordination service, and one of the students is a Catholic nun. She felt called to the interfaith ministry, but since her tradition denies women's divinity and ability to minister, the Catholic hierarchy refused to allow her to be ordained interfaith. She came up with an alternative commissioning ceremony which would allow her to perform rites of passage and other limited ministries. But it was so painful to see her carry the weight of what she knew was wrong on the part of her tradition. She was called by God, but her desire to work within the fold was stronger than her desire to be ordained outside of it. The Catholic patriarchy is still trying to deny what much of the rest of the world is beginning to understand:  that women are real people, just as divine as men, just as capable and just as worthy of love. The old stories that justified the oppression of women are still being used to keep their voices silenced.

Women are being successful in the world, holding positions of authority, responsibility, power and divinity. It's there for anyone to witness to. The only way religions can avoid changing their dogma and stories regarding women is to deny what is before their eyes. I hate to make a comparison between anyone and the Taliban, but the image is concrete. To deny today's understanding of the power of women, religions have to cover up the truth, hide it behind burkas, oppress reality, and silence it.

Denial is a common reaction to what challenges our assumptions and misconceptions. Right now, the Catholic clergy are reeling under the accusations of clergy sexual misconduct that are finally surfacing. How can the priests have allowed such behavior? How can the authorities have failed to respond to suspicions or even allegations? All I can say is that it is the Catholics' turn. We Unitarian Universalists went through that in the eighties, with some horrendous stories coming out. One minister ended up having over twenty, so I heard, accusations from women who said he had seduced them during emotionally painful counseling sessions. When we first heard it in our district, there was just one accusation. We ministers happened to be at a retreat, so we went around and expressed how we were feeling about it. The breakout was amazing. The male ministers, and those who had been around a long time, couldn't believe the accusations could be true. The women ministers and those who were new to the ministry believed it and expressed concern not just for their colleague but for the woman who had come forth. For us to reflect on this over the years is to acknowledge that we do resort to denial in the face of painful realizations or fearful possibilities. That's how the priests could have allowed such behavior; it couldn't possibly have been true.

A global community presents the challenge to all religions to evaluate very old, even ancient, assumptions. Religions will find it harder and harder to hide behind their established oppressions, or rather, to hide their established oppressions, as the world literally looks on. In the same way that religions have worked to confront the evils of society, so too ought society to work to confront the evils of religion. We can no longer allow religions to teach hatred of others, oppression of others. The separation of church and state merely means the state shall make no laws concerning religious organizations, or something like that. But it doesn't mean that society should allow religions to teach oppression, hate, and violence.

A number of years ago, and I'm just relating this from memory, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit against an Aryan brotherhood type of organization, religious, that was teaching young white males to hate homosexuals, and sending them out on dares to terrorize them, one excursion of which resulted in the death of a young man--I think it was up near Seattle. The amazing thing was that the Center won. I wish I had my file on it, because I could tell you more details, but it was a relief that the law would confront a religious organization for teaching people to break the law, for teaching hate, and for promoting murder.

It's a frightening proposition to speak out against immoral teachings of religions. The very things we are fighting against, such as oppression and hate and violence, are defended by people who promote and resort to violence. Fear is the weapon they use. I remember the Easter three years ago when it snowed. We couldn't look out the windows during the service because they were covered with black paper. Someone had shot out all the windows in the sanctuary that week. We couldn't help wonder why. Was it personal? Was it because of our work on becoming a welcoming congregation? Was it because of our reputation as Unitarian Universalists? Was it just a bunch of idiot people drinking one night and trying to prove something? We will never know unless the perpetrators were to admit to it. But this is the kind of fear and intimidation hate-mongers use. Still, if we look inside ourselves, we know we cannot not work for our values in society. Our faith challenges us to speak out for good in the world.

One global truth is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The UU United Nations office once printed a full page of one-liners from the world's religions stating just that one truth in many ways. There are values, morals we hold in common, morals which will help us live in peace and justice as a global community. We need to begin to articulate those clearly, and to challenge the religious to respond to the new world in ways that will enable that community to be a good community. That is what religions are supposed to be about:  how to live in community and to be good with one another.

I have this little cartoon Curtiss cut out for me from this week's New Yorker magazine. The scene is outside the church on Sunday, and a woman is standing next to the priest and whispers to him behind her hand, "I'm sure you're one of the good ones." That's what we want to believe about our religious leaders and our religious institutions. But let us not be blind. Let us not deny what our senses know. There is a time to challenge what is not right, even as we affirm what is good in religions. It is beyond time to hold religions accountable for enabling the global community to live in peace and to work for justice for all.

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson