How to Separate Church and State?
By Rabbi Jeffrey W. Goldwasser
I suppose that if I were a plumber, I might think that chrome-plated faucets were a necessity of life. I'm not a plumber. I am a member of the clergy. So I live with the conviction that spirituality is as necessary for human beings as food, clothing and shelter.
If I am right -- no matter how self-serving my motive -- then there must be an imperative to bring spirituality into the lives of all people, just as there is an imperative to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless. To ignore the spiritual needs of a person -- especially a person suffering through hard times or an emotional crisis -- is as cruel as to deny medicine to the sick.
To be sure, spirituality can take many forms -- whether found in organized religion, in a deep appreciation for the coming of spring, or in a thoughtful reading of a great work of literature. There are many possibilities for exploring ultimate meaning in life, but the journey does not always happen by itself. It must be nurtured, especially in childhood, to encourage a life that reflects upon its higher purpose and meaning.
That's why I was hard struck a few weeks ago at the monthly meeting of the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition (full disclosure -- I serve on the Coalition's board). Each month, the Coalition meeting focuses on a topic of community concern. At the May meeting, the focus was on our faith communities and the social services they provide in Northern Berkshire. At this meeting, a young mother talked about her frustration in addressing the spiritual needs of her child.
After hearing others speak of faith as an avenue toward moral courage in a difficult world, this mother confessed that she did not know how to give that gift to her child. I have the feeling that she is not alone. In our society, which seems to care more about American Idol and Britney Spears than it does about ultimate meaning, it's hard to keep your values straight, let alone teach them to your kids. The challenge is even greater if you have no experience with a faith community and if you have little time or energy to invest in connecting with one.
The United States Constitution does not allow religious instruction in public schools -- good thing, too. Our religious beliefs are diverse and they are personal. The last thing we need is government telling us what to believe. Still, we do not require children to be examined for their spiritual competence in the way that we require school meals to be healthy and vaccinations to be up-to-date. So, how does our society ensure that the basic human need for spirituality will be satisfied in our children?
There are some right-wing groups today that are trying to short-circuit this question by denying that the founders intended to create a separation between church and state in American polity. They argue that the phrase, "separation of church and state," does not appear in any founding documents (true enough), and that many of the founders were devout Christians (also true). Some, like the evangelist, D. James Kennedy, have gone so far as to claim that the intent of the founders was to establish the United States as a "Christian nation."
What they don't mention, or purposely ignore, is that the United States was founded by people of faith who wanted a government that specifically would [italic] not [end italic] establish or enforce religion. James Madison wrote that, "Religion and government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together." Madison, and the other framers, could have created a government that embraced religion, but they pointedly chose the opposite because they believed that both religion and government would be better served by being kept separate.
Yet, how do we translate that intention into an age in which many lack the time, energy or background to give their children a foundation in spirituality? Who will provide that necessity of human existence if over-worked parents don't and if faith institutions are barred at the public door? That's the question that I heard coming from the young mother at the Coalition meeting. My fear is that the answer is going to be either: 1) Nobody, 2) Those of the religious right who flaunt church-state separation, or, worst of all, 3) The advertisers on American Idol, the promoters of Britney Spears, and anyone else who wants to sell you something.
Our society needs a better answer. I believe that it is time that we begin to take spirituality more seriously as a social issue, but without damaging the framers' vision of a nation free from religious coercion. Our schools do need to teach values -- honesty, integrity, self-respect, courage, caring for others and taking action against wrongdoing. We can't teach religion in public schools, but we can foster a child's spiritual life by opening her mind to the world of ideas that transcend the self.
D. James Kennedy and others on the religious right would create a society in which they could thump their holy books over the heads of others, and in which government would be in the business of promoting religious belief. That's not what we need. Rather, we need a society that looks very much like the meeting of the Community Coalition a few weeks ago -- a place for open talk about our spiritual lives, where people are free to give voice to faith.
Yes, to meet people's spiritual needs we need conversation, not indoctrination. We need to foster a society in which people of all backgrounds are encouraged to come together to talk about their faith, their fears and their highest aspirations. Each of us needs an opportunity to listen to the hearts of others and to express our own dreams.
Following the death, last Thursday of Terri Schiavo, the media seemed to be at a loss to explain the meaning of one of the strangest and cruelest campaigns in recent American politics. News analysts and television talking heads were confused. They wanted a "winner" in the latest battle of America's culture wars. But, in this family tragedy, there were no winners.
Despite the earnest efforts of some politicians to turn a family's suffering into a political match-up, the Terri Schiavo case was never really a public issue at all. Terri Schiavo's story was of a family divided by two religious visions for their most vulnerable member, and unable to resolve those visions. A very sad family situation, indeed.
You can understand, though, why Americans would want to make this family's story into their own. America is just like Terri Schiavo's family. We, too, are divided by differing and unreconciled visions about religion.
Religion is taking a new role in American society. Once we were a country that, for the most part, treated issues of religious belief as private matters of conscience -- beyond the pale of public scrutiny or polite conversation. That old notion, however, appears to be fading.
On the job, in our schools, in corporate boardrooms and in Congress, religion is a growing presence in the public sphere. The last presidential election dramatically showed how powerful some religious ideas can be in forming Americans' opinions and their voting patterns. Religion rhetoric is invoked nowadays in almost every policy debate. From foreign policy discussions to local school budgets, religion in America has come out of the closet.
So far, the political right has been most successful is using the growing influence of religion toward its ends. However, I believe that the emergence of religious power in America is not just a right-wing phenomenon. It is a social trend that transcends politics. Conservative politicians have tried to make religion their private domain, but they are likely to find that, in the long run, people of faith will not serve political masters. They already serve a different Master.
Religious ideas are not inherently liberal or conservative. Neither is religious power intrinsically good or bad. On the good side, religion might help our society focus on the moral issues at the heart of most public policy questions. Religion also may have the power to reengage Americans in the eternal ideals and values of our democracy that transcend partisanship.
On the other side, the increasing influence of religion in secular affairs could threaten our nation's foundational values of tolerance and pluralism. The American innovation of a wall separating church and state has helped protect the rights of religious minorities. It also has helped stifle the impulse to legislate religion -- an impulse that cheapens both religion and statecraft. With the rise of religious political power, we could see erosion in that wall.
Which path will we take? Will we allow religious values to elevate us as a nation without demeaning our democratic values? Surely, it is possible. The framers of our democracy believed that the free exercise of religion was a cornerstone of a just society. But in our period of redefinition -- when we are witnessing a changing relationship between society and religion -- there is great potential for mischief and danger in the name of religion.
That's what happened in the frenzy around Terri Schiavo. Greedy with the hope of inciting religious voters, some politicians turned a private family matter into a circus. They cheapened religion by turning it into a hammer to hit their enemies instead of a bridge to bring people together. As a result, our society lost an opportunity for a more meaningful discussion about how religion can help us shape policies for families in similar situations.
Yes, religion can help heal families in crisis, not just tear them apart. We need a civil conversation in this country about faith and its power to help families watching a loved one die. Faith can help teach us to make end-of-life decisions together and sanctity lives that cannot speak for themselves. Religion has much to say about these questions -- not on bumper stickers and in stump speeches, but in thoughtful, considered policy making.
Last month, we instead saw religion used by the opportunistic to declare some people villains and other people victims -- and all with little reflection upon or regard for complex issues and family relations. We saw widespread confusion as real human beings were treated in the media like caricatures. We saw, and we are seeing, a society that is changing the lines that once defined the limits of religious authority.
The Schiavo case did not show the changing role of religion in America at its best, but it was far from the worst that still may be. All Americans, and especially religious Americans, need to be mindful of what is happening to religion in our country. The religious know that faith can be a powerful force for good. However, that knowledge must not blind us to the great evil that can be done in the name of religion when it becomes a vehicle for partisan power brokering.
Our society is changing. Those who declare that religion should retreat to its former, limited role are missing a fundamental truth about what is happening in our society. They also may be missing an opportunity for our society to change for the better. Like it or not -- for the better or for the worse -- religion, religious institutions, and their power are part of a changing American landscape.
Orthodox vs. Liberal: What Does God Have in Mind?
A few weeks ago the New York Times carried a remarkable photograph on its front page. In this picture, six men stood at a press conference, each wearing elaborate and distinctly different religious clothing. They included Israel's two chief rabbis, the Latin Catholic patriarch of Jerusalem, the Armenian patriarch, and a sheik representing Jerusalem's Muslim authority.
What made the photo remarkable in my eyes was that these men appeared together, speaking to the media, with a unity of purpose.
I rubbed my eyes. Could this be? What on earth could make these men, from such different faiths and perspectives, unite in collaboration? A new initiative for Middle East peace? A call to understand and respect each other's faiths? No. I read the story accompanying the photograph to discover that these leaders of Judaism, Christianity and Islam had come together (and here I must sigh) to denounce a gay pride festival.
You thought these guys had nothing in common? Think again. They are strongly united -- and not just in opposing gay rights. They are united in the fundamental principle of orthodoxy.
The word "orthodox" means "right thought." It conveys a world view that can be summed up in the phrase, "God said it, we believe it, end of discussion." To the orthodox, sacred texts are rule books that tell you how to behave and how to think. This is the idea that brought together the rabbis, the patriarchs, and the sheik -- the idea that there can be only one right way to understand the mind of God.
Being orthodox does not necessarily mean being old-fashioned. We are living in a time when much of the change happening in religion is coming from the world of orthodoxy. Look at the far-right mega-churches across the American suburbs with their high-tech sound and light shows. Look at the market-tested, media-savvy offerings of Chabad, the group that puts the "fun" back into Jewish fundamentalism. These are not protectors of that old time religion; they are today's religious innovators.
The paradoxical truth is that orthodoxy has become hip. The great irony is that orthodoxy is the common thread that now links Wahabist Islam, the Protestant Religious Right, Ultra-Orthodox Judaism, and Catholic organizations like Opus Dei. Strange bedfellows, indeed.
The success of all these religious orthodoxies stems from their uncompromising opposition to a powerful and worthy enemy -- modern secularism. Believers in orthodoxy rightly decry the secular world as being plagued by materialism and egotism. They see their brand of religion as the easy antidote. However, what seems difficult for many orthodox believers to see is that theirs is not the only religious view.
Religious liberals share much of the criticism of modernity expressed by the orthodox, but they have very different ideas about how to understand God. To liberals, there is no end to the discussion about God. Liberals read their sacred texts more like poetry than like rule books. They welcome a diversity of interpretations -- old and new -- that all have something to say about truth. Over time, revealed texts can take on new meanings to the religious liberal, as human beings engage with the text, explore subtleties, and change in awareness.
This is where the real division is in today's religions -- not between one faith and another -- but between orthodoxy and liberalism. Not just our nation, but our world, is divided between those who view religion as the source of black and white truths, and those who view religion as a forum for appreciating the poetry of a world that is painted in shades of gray.
It is now more common to see religious liberals from different religions join together than it is to see them joined with their orthodox co-religionists. For example, the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry, which supports marriage rights for same-sex couples in Massachusetts, includes liberal members of many religions -- in fact, many of the same religions that are represented by the opponents of the gay pride festival in the Times' photo. Catholic and Episcopal priests, Protestant ministers, and Jewish rabbis (including myself) are among their liberal supporters, just as orthodox clergy from the same religions are united in opposition.
This division is understood well by the man who now leads the Roman Catholic Church. Just before his election as Pope, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger spoke against liberal religion, calling it "a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires." Catholics hoping for a return to a church more open to diversity of opinion, should hear the new Pope's words as a warning.
To an adherent of orthodoxy, like Pope Benedict XVI, liberalism is an arrogant attempt to dethrone God and place humanity at the center of all. Religious liberals will counter that it is the orthodox who arrogantly assume that they can definitively know the mind of God, the meaning of God's words, and the practices God wants for all time.
Both are right and both are wrong. All people of faith are orthodox to the extent that they reject a world view in which any belief or behavior that appeals to us can be acceptable. There is such a thing as right and wrong. All people of faith are liberals to the extent that they recognize limitations in the human ability to apply divine truths to a world that is very, very complicated. At some point, you have to be willing to say, "I just don't know what God has in mind right now."
Looking at that picture of the rabbis, the patriarchs and the sheik, I, too, must bow my head and say, "Sometimes, I just don't know..."
(The Center for Progressive Christianity encouraged churches to observe the Day of Pentecost, 27 May 2007, as a day to highlight the importance of pluralism. Accepting that invitation, our Rector invited Rabbi Jeffrey W. Goldwasser, spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams, to preach at the parish eucharist that day. Here is his sermon.)
“The Tower of Babel”
Sermon presented at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Williamstown, MA
Sunday, May 27, 2007 (Pentecost)
By Rabbi Jeffrey W. Goldwasser
of Congregation Beth Israel, North Adams
It’s not every day that you see a rabbi giving a sermon in a church. I want to thank my friend, the Reverend Peter Elvin, for inviting me here today and I want to thank you, this holy community, for the gracious way in which you have welcomed me. Thank you.
I’d like to talk to you today about issues of the heart and issues facing our world. In both of our traditions -- Judaism and Christianity -- we view our sacred texts as a source of guidance both for the task of examining ourselves and the task of working to make our world a better place. We are fortunate, as Christians and as Jews, that we have a sacred text in common, and that we can learn from each other about the ways that each of our traditions has responded to this common heritage.
We’ve read this morning from the book of Genesis how, following the Flood, the “whole earth had one language and the same words,” and how the people decided together to “build a tower with its top in the heavens.” The story is curious. God sees that humanity will be able to accomplish “anything they propose to do.” God foils their plans to build a tower to heaven by confusing their speech so that they could not “understand one another.” Instead of working together on their great Tower, the people scatter over the face of the earth, unable to communicate with each other.
Now, this is a story that I have known since I was a child. You probably have, too. The meaning of the story always seemed simple to me: God will thwart arrogance -- the arrogance of human beings who behave as if they could storm the gates of heaven and declare themselves to be gods. There is only one God, and people who try to supplant God bring confusion and pain into the world. That seems like a good, monotheistic lesson to draw from the story -- one that teaches reverence for God and a sense of humility before one’s Creator.
But the story is not quite that simple. Looking at it more closely, we are forced to ask some difficult questions. What was wrong with what the people of Babel proposed to do? They don’t say that they want to storm the gates of heaven, as it were. Rather, they say only that they want to make names for themselves -- to gain fame -- and that they wanted to avoid being scattered into separate corners of the earth. I ask you, my friends, if the people of the earth today came to say that they wanted to make themselves remembered by future generations by launching a global project to bring the people of the world together, what would be wrong with that? Even more, if that project was intended to bring humanity closer to God, who would find fault in that?
I don’t need to tell you that there is too much already that separates human beings from each other. Our world is torn apart by enmity between East and West, rich and poor, left and right, Indian and Pakistani, Arab and Jew, Shia and Sunni — the list of labels we use to hate each other is endless. I do not believe that our text this morning intends to teach us that God gave us different languages and scattered us so that we would reach this state — endlessly divided by race, belief and language, and always in conflict with one another because of our differences. Rather, I see the text as a challenge. God has made us all different. The question is, how will we treat the person who is different from ourselves? Will we honor and celebrate our different ways of expressing ourselves, or will we use difference as an excuse to hate?
So, what is the intention of the story we read this morning about the Tower of Babel. Why did God punish people who came together to gain fame and to reach towards heaven? What, exactly, was the sin of Babel, that God chose to confuse and scatter them?
The story has an interesting, and somewhat surprising, interpretation in midrash. Midrash is an interpretative device in Judaism, one that attempts to read between the lines of the biblical text to find hidden meanings, often in the form of legends that embellish the Bible’s stories. It is not uncommon for different midrashim on the same text to contradict each other. The important thing about a midrash isn’t the story it tells, but the meaning it uncovers in the text.
According to one midrash on the Tower of Babel story, the Tower took many years to build. It was of such great height that it would take a person a year to climb from the base to the top. Every brick that was baked on the ground and brought up to the top of the Tower was, therefore, considered extremely valuable — it represented a huge investment in energy and time. As the Tower ascended, according to the midrash, its builders began to see bricks as more precious than people. If a person fell off the Tower and died, no one took notice. But, if a brick fell, they wept, because it would take a year to replace it.
In the Talmud, we have another enigmatic statement about the Tower of Babel. The rabbis teach that the air around the Tower, to this day, has the power to cause people to forget. (Sandhedrin 102a)
Just as I had imagined as a child, the midrash says that the sin of the builders of the Tower of Babel was arrogance. However, it is a more subtle and, perhaps, a more recognizable form of arrogance than simple rebellion against God. The builders of Babel did not knowingly act out of a desire to overthrow God. They did, however, act out of an assumption that a human being’s worth could be measured relative to a human purpose. As a result, they treated human beings as if they were less valuable than the bricks they used to climb towards their dream.
That, too, is a form of arrogance and a different kind of rebellion against God. It is the arrogance that denies a central teaching of our common sacred text — that each human being is created in the image of God. When we deny the infinite value of each human being, we also deny this truth, and we deny God.
I say that the arrogance of Babel is a recognizable form of arrogance because it is the arrogance that we have experienced in our own hearts. You probably have never tried to storm the gates of heaven to overthrow God — I hope! But we all can recognize moments in which we have had the arrogance of believing that people around us are, somehow, expendable to our needs. Perhaps you, like I, have noticed yourself taking sudden interest in another person when you believe you have something to gain from him or her, but ignoring that person when you perceive no advantage. It’s a common thing to do, but it is an example of placing a value on a person based on our purposes. With reflection, we realize that even if our purpose is most noble, reducing a person to a finite value denies the truth that we are all created in the image of God.
We all have had the experience of ignoring or minimizing news of some terrible event that happened to someone else, far away. In our 24/7 information culture, it is so easy to hear about a devastating earthquake, a genocide in Africa, or a famine in the far East, and allow it to melt into the background of so much information noise. However, in that moment, when we turn the channel to hear something happier, it is as if we are peering over the edge of the Tower, down into the abyss below, watching the body as it falls, saying to ourselves, “Ah. Poor fellow. Well, at least I’ve still got all of my bricks.”
This is an ordinary sort of arrogance, an ordinary form of rebellion against heaven and our highest hopes for ourselves. We don’t mean to cause hurt. Sometimes, though, we forget. We forget to see the miracle and infinite worth that is within each human being. We want to treat every encounter with another person as an encounter with the divine, but we forget. The Tower of Babel is a reminder of how easy it is to forget. Perhaps that is why the Talmud teaches that the Tower of Babel has the power of causing forgetfulness.
When we forget to treat another person as an image of God, we can cause them hurt. Most often, though, the worst hurt we cause is the damage we inflict upon our own souls. We cause ourselves harm when we coarsen our appreciation for the divinity that lies within each human being. As we treat others in a utilitarian fashion, we come to think of our own lives in terms of what we can produce, what material value we can create. We forget our own divinity. Conversely, every time we nurture within ourselves the habit of treating others as godly, we also recognize and refine the godliness that is within ourselves.
If the rabbis’ legend about the Tower of Babel teaches us about the nurture of our souls, it also has something to say about creating societies of integrity and value. The Tower of Babel story is about the choices made by an entire society and how they can go wrong. The leaders of Babel wanted to reach for heaven — such a noble goal — but they attempted to do so by squashing other human beings and by putting themselves in the place of God. It is a story that should sound familiar to us. We have seen how our political and religious leaders can declare their own righteousness, claim knowledge of the will of God, and assume the authority to judge and, even, to impose their will upon others.
The claims made by some religious leaders that diseases, hurricanes or earthquakes are God’s response to punish various sorts of sinners are loathsome modern examples of the arrogance of Babel. The moment you reach for heaven by reviling another human being, you have become a Tower builder.
We have seen political leaders who justify the harm done by their well intended policies with a shrug. Believing themselves to be unfailingly on the side of the angels, they look at the harm they have caused and say, “It’s all for the best because we’re in the right.” During the Vietnam War we saw this when a military officer, famously, announced, “The village had to be destroyed in order to save it.” A generation later, in a new war, we have heard the Secretary of Defense dismiss the horrors of war with the phrase: “Stuff happens and it’s untidy.”
Human beings are imperfect and even wise leaders make mistakes — sometimes terrible mistakes. Reverence, though, demands that errors and faults be acknowledged and that we learn from our mistakes — over and over, if need be. We need to learn that we are not gods and that we cannot presume to speak for God.
“Who is the true rebel against God?” the midrash seems to ask. Who is the one who would usurp the place of heaven? It is not the one who would openly defy heaven by declaring war against it. It is the one who, with the best of intentions, devalues the lives of others, and justifies it as an act of sanctity. Those who declare divine judgment against those with whom they disagree — whether it concerns human sexuality, reproduction, war, or for whom to vote in the next election — are well on their way up the steps of Babel’s Tower.
That is why God put an end to the Tower. God divided humanity by confusing its language because humanity already had divided itself from heaven by assuming heaven’s authority for itself. Our challenge, in a world still torn apart by that confusion, is to find our way back to one another. If we find that we speak different tongues, let that be a source of blessing, not division.
Your reading this morning from the Book of Acts provides a beautiful metaphor for this truth. The disciple, Peter, hears the sound of men speaking in many tongues and perceives the divine music within it. Others hear only cacophony and suspect “new wine” to be the cause, but Peter listens through the confusion and hears grace. He says that the many strange languages all spoken at once, taken together, fulfill the words of the Hebrew prophet Joel, “The youth shall see visions, and the old shall dream dreams.” Our different voices and different tongues can combine to form a beautiful unison — a vision of the One. We just need to value each other, see the divinity within each other, and we need to listen to each other deeply.
Today, let us capture in our hearts the reverence that comes from knowing that we are imperfect and that the final knowledge of God is not within our power. Let us be reminded that, if we have been educated in different ways to speak the sacred, we can learn from one another and not deride the one who is different.
God who divides and brings together, help us to hear Your voice today. Give us courage to see Your image in every human heart and hear your voice on every human tongue. Allow us to follow the words of your prophet Micah who instructed us to “do what is right, to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God.”
Let us not forget.
