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Covenant for
Social Responsibility © Really, I’m not sure there’s a need to preach a sermon this morning, after reading you the story by Dr. Seuss. He captures it all. Societal inequities such as class distinction, exploitation of people for money, and the vision of an earth made fair and all her people one. Let me back up a moment, and let you know that this morning is a third in a series of eight sermons I’m giving this year based on A Spiritual Covenant with America put out by the Network of Spiritual Progressives. I’m on the third covenant - the covenant of social responsibility, which begins with this line: "We will break through the social disconnection that traps so many people in loneliness and alienation." Seuss captures that so well "When the star-belly sneetches had frankfurter roasts or picnics or parties or marshmallow toasts they never invited the plain-belly sneetches they left them out cold, in the dark of the beaches. They kept them away. Never let them come near. And that’s how they treated them year after year. Kids can relate to that feeling of being left out - that social disconnection - and so can adults. Remaining connected to others is important, and sometimes when we feel this social disconnection - and probably all of us have felt at some point, or we couldn’t relate to the story of the Sneetches -can cause us sometimes to seek connection at any cost and at times compromise our values. The Plain Belly Sneetches yearn so much to be included, that they pay Sylvester McMonkey McBean $3 each to put stars on their bellies just so they can fit in. but it’s not the stars they want on their bellies, it’s the acceptance they want from the other Sneetches. So McBean can charge them even more to remove the stars when that next becomes key to social connection… For most of us, I think, the compromises are small - and somehow because they’re small either we don’t notice or think they don’t count - agreeing to do something when you don’t really want to, or telling someone you’re okay, when you’re really hurting inside but are not sure how that truth might be received. And the more others around us compromise, the harder it is for us to resist compromising our own values when faced with those feelings of loneliness and alienation… Writes Lerner, "We will resist the cynical realism that reduces all public discourse to the manipulation of that which can be measured, ignoring precisely what is most deeply human: the spiritual dimension of our experience." Now for some of you, it’s not exactly clear what the spiritual dimension of our experience is… I’m not sure it’s entirely clear to me… but logically, it must be something intangible, something that can’t be measured - something perhaps like love, or acceptance, or that warm fuzzy feeling at the end of the Sneetches on that day when they got really smart. I think Lerner is right on to use the language of resistance here - because the social forces are powerful, the social forces that define the bottom line as monetary and measure worth in dollars. It takes a great deal of resistance to not fall into that way of thinking about the world, and to project a different bottom line, one in which those intangible, perhaps spiritual, values such as love and caring and compassion are primary. The project of this spiritual covenant with America is all about changing that bottom line. I think this third covenant is the one that excites me the most, in part because there’s a concrete, tangible, suggestion that I think just might change the world as we know it. This Social Responsibility Amendment that requires corporations to get a new corporate charter once every ten years -and that charter would only be granted to those corporations that could prove to a jury of ordinary citizens that it had a satisfactory history of social responsibility. When I first read it, it sounded entirely unlikely, impossible, implausible. But when he equates it with the struggle for equal rights for women, I began to see the light. You see, I used to carry around the entire contents of the equal rights amendment in my wallet in junior high school:
I carried it around in my wallet just to show those who argued against it how simple and straightforward it was. The amendment remained three states short of ratification and is not yet a part of our constitution… but oh, the changes that have been made since 1923 when the language was first proposed! The conversations I had in 7th grade with my classmates arguing over the importance of this amendment to our constitution and why I thought it must be included… just remembering those days helps me see how this unlikely proposal of a Social Responsibility Amendment to the constitution could get the conversation started about how things could be different and why they should be different and what a real bottom line (sustainability perhaps?) should look like in the corporate world. Cynical realism, says Lerner, prevents us from thinking big - like amending the constitution. Cynical realism allows us to accept the exploitation of people and the corruption of corporations.. It allows us to accept that the poor will get poorer, the rich will get richer, and the middle class get nowhere. Talking about a Social Responsibility Amendment might help those few companies that are already doing incredible work in the areas of social responsibility and sustainability, talking about this might help them along. I’m going to use three examples here that I’ve used before - I keep returning to them, because I think they’re likely to change the world. The fair trade trend - that we support here at church by selling and buying coffee that supports rather than exploits its growers and workers. "Just about half of our congregations, around 500, are now buying and serving fairly traded coffee as a way of supporting small coffee growers and human rights on three continents. Fairly traded products promote grassroots development through direct, equitable trade. "Fair Trade" products are certified by Fair Trade Labeling Organizations International, an umbrella group formed by Fair Trade companies.
My second example is the Blackspot Anticorporation that sells sneakers made from organically grown cotton, recycled rubber bands, with exemplary labor practices. Purchase of the produce makes you a shareholder in the anticorporation whose aim is to make products that are human and environmentally friendly, for which there is already a demand and which are not promoted or pushed on the public with useless advertising. (Ode Magazine, October 2006, page 57) Finally, and I think this is truly my favorite example, because you can read about it in a book that demonstrates their principles… Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by architect Bill McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart. This books is written on materials that can be perpetually circulated in closed loops, based on the principle that waste should equal food. Rather than down-cycling - which is what we mostly do now, where products we supposedly "re-cycle," are actually made into different and lesser quality products until they are no longer recylclable and become waste that cannot be used as food. Instead, they propose products like the book they wrote their ideas on, printed on synthetic paper made from plastic resins and inorganic fillers designed to look and feel like kind of like paper but also waterproof, rugged, and recyclable. These treeless books point the way to the day when synthetic books can be used, recycled and re-used again without losing any material quality or producing waste. This is just one example of the kind of design they propose for the next industrial revolution - but they propose it be done on all kinds of things from furniture (check out the Herman Miller factory in Holland, MI) to cars (the Ford Motor company) You do this by creating products, like cars where organic and inorganic material used on the product can be separated at the end of its life and inorganic material re-used without degradation, and organic material becomes food for more organic material…. I see the potential of the Social Responsibility Amendment to help this kind of thinking that already exists expand, influence, and help us create a new bottom line, where sustainability, for example, takes precedence over money-making. Sustainability refers to everything from the human participants - fair labor practices - to the environmental impact. I see Lerner’s work, and the work of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, right in line with the social gospel movement of the early 20th century. Walter Rauschenbusch is the founder of social Christianity in this country, coming out of a Baptist tradition. John Haynes Holmes, is the Unitarian minister probably most well known for a social gospel and Clarence Skinner is the Universalist advocate. John Haynes Holmes was a founding member of the NAACP - National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union. . Skinner, who is quoted on the front of your order of service, is also the influence behind the Declaration of Social Principles that was quoted in the first reading this morning. He was secretary of the Universalist Service Commission and wrote the Social Implications of Universalism. The social gospel movement put social consciousness back into religion. It said that we are influenced by those around us and can influence in turn the world around us and that to ignore those connections is to our own peril. Personal piety and perfection will not save us. We are of the world and have a need, in fact, to save the world. The social gospel is a strong antidote to the Calvinist theology that swept across America and has rooted itself and remains evident in much of our politics today - the theology that reduces poverty and degradation to a personal flaw of character and says that we need to pick ourselves up by the bootstrap, ignoring the incredible social forces that work against individuals and entire classes of people in this country. Social forces that work against us…. As we enter this season of holiday giving, and the pressures many of us feel, give yourself a break - it is not a personal flaw if you find yourself compromising a value or two - it’s not your weak character. There are many social forces working hard to make you equate love with gifting and money and demand that you celebrate or feel good even if you are grieving or feeling lousy. Recognize that it’s hard. We all want to be invited to frankfurter roasts or picnics or parties or marshmallow toasts - we don’t want to be left out in the cold, in the dark of the beaches. But the solution that McBean offers - the buying your way to happiness - is not the answer either. We need to get as smart as the Sneetches - recognizing that we are who we are, and we’re no better than others, and we need one another. If you are into buying gifts for your loved ones at Christmas, consider re-gifting. My Grandma Esther did that - she had an entire room for gifts and wrapping - kept all the gifts she received that she didn’t want and gifted them to others later. When she started suffering from dementia, and gave me the Chorus Line album that I had given her the year before, it was a very moving gift. You see, she had taken me to see the show in Seattle, and it was a fond memory we shared together. And that she associated it with me still was more important than the fact that I already had the album. Or if you have money to invest in gifts, consider supporting fair trade industries and products that you believe in - for whatever reason, their beauty or practicality. Or the last few years, my family has taken to emailing each other our charity of choice and gifting each other donations to charities. For my dad, I send money to Amnesty International, for others I buy goats or chickens or ducks from Heifer International that help people around the world with sustainable farming practices, and yet for others I send money to the American Association for Cancer Research… but none of this was done easily at first. And I couldn’t do it, probably, without the support of those around me, my family, from whom my values grew and took root… and I am not fully consistent and that’s okay with me these days… Lerner is right, I think, to use the language of resistance- because the social forces are powerful, the social forces that define the bottom line as monetary and measure worth in dollars. It takes a great deal of resistance to not fall into that way of thinking about the world, and to project a different bottom line, one in which those intangible, perhaps spiritual, values such as love and caring and compassion are primary. The project of this spiritual covenant with America is all about changing that bottom line. It’s time to renew the social gospel. It is time to remember how much we need one another to help live up to our highest values. We need one another to survive as individuals. We need one another to survive as a planet. You know the Margaret Mead quote, probably, "never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has." May it be so.
* Sermons are meant to be spoken and not written. I have not edited this homily to written form. Sermons copyright 2006, all rights reserved. Unitarian Universalist
Church of Greater Lansing
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