First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh
605 Morewood Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-2999
412-621-8008
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605 Morewood Avenue |
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A LIBERAL FOCUS ON FAMILIES By David Herndon
Politically, Charles Coughlin was representative of the Progressive tradition in the United States, and, in the mid-1930s, along with Huey Long of Louisiana, he expressed impatience with President Roosevelt's alleged slowness in bringing the country out of the Great Depression. On November 11, 1934, Coughlin was bold enough to announce the formation of a new political organization, the National Union for Social Justice. The strength of Coughlin's influence became apparent early in 1935. President Roosevelt had asked the Senate to approve a treaty declaring the United States to be a member of the World Court. But on January 27, 1935, Father Coughlin preached strongly against this move, and asked members of his audience to express their opposition directly to their Senators. Historian David Kennedy reports that "Coughlin's vast audience responded with an avalanche of telegrams, wheelbarrowed by the hundreds of thousands into the Senate Office Building on the morning of Monday, January 28." [3] As a result, the Senate did not approve Roosevelt's plan to have the United States join the World Court. Since that time, many religious figures have ventured into electronic broadcasting. From backwoods preachers delivering their messages to local audiences over tiny transmitters to polished orators reaching listeners around the world over hundreds of radio stations, the entire theological spectrum has hopped aboard the electromagnetic spectrum. I am told that sermons delivered from this very pulpit here at the First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh were once broadcast over KDKA in the 1950s. Nowadays, one religious figure who has used radio quite successfully is Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family. In a recent newspaper article, columnist Ellen Goodman offers this description of Dr. Dobson and his ideas: "If there's anything that Dobson's group believes, it's the need for discipline. . . . Dobson, the folksy child psychologist who founded Focus on the Family, is now a political powerhouse. But if you are trying to understand the success of the religious right, you could do a lot worse than read his parenting book: Dare to Discipline. The book and its update have sold roughly 3.5 million copies by positing the central family drama as a power struggle between parents and children. He asks: 'Who is going to win? Who has the most courage? Who is in charge here?' . . . Dobson also uses another weapon to wield his authority: spanking. Despite repeated protests against child abuse, he preaches chillingly that 'nothing brings a parent and child closer together more than for the mother or father to win decisively after being defiantly challenged.' . . . Dobson defines the family problem as a permissive world of children run amok who need the tough love of parents who 'dare' to discipline. The success story is that he has followed this authoritarian line directly into conservative politics. . . . He has taken this . . . from the home to the pulpit to politics where he now blasts judges by saying: 'They're out of control. And I think they need to be reined in.'" [4] Ellen Goodman summarizes Dobson's approach to politics with this paraphrase: "Spare the rod and spoil the country." From time to time I have dared to listen to Focus on the Family on the local conservative Christian radio station, WORD, 101.5 FM. One thing I learned is that Focus on the Family has approximately thirteen hundred paid employees. Or maybe that is the Family Research Council, another conservative Christian radio ministry. In any case, that is more than the total number of Unitarian Universalist ministers actively serving churches here in the United States. But something I did not really grasp until I read Ellen Goodman's article is that the focus of Focus on the Family extends far beyond families. The remarkable thing that Dr. James Dobson has done is to connect a conservative approach to family life with a conservative approach to national politics. Once Ellen Goodman points this out, she issues this stirring challenge: "It's easy, too easy, to lampoon Dobson as the man who trashed SpongeBob SquarePants as a gay subversive. Instead, progressives ought to be studying him. Focus on the Family takes child-raising seriously. . . . Who on the political left is offering help with [impatient] kids at the checkout counter? Who is parlaying a less-authoritarian way of raising children into a full-blown political movement? . . . I don't believe that the sole problem of family life is a lack of discipline. . . . But it's up to progressives now to expand and explain an ideology that leads from our house to the White House, from parenting to foreign policy." [5] In honor of Fathers' Day, I would like to use the remainder of my sermon this morning to take up the challenge that Ellen Goodman sets forth. No doubt what I say will be incomplete. No doubt other progressive people would offer a different response. But I think Ellen Goodman's challenge is important, and I hope that what I offer here this morning will at least help the conversation move forward. Unitarian Universalist minister Ken Patton has provided a beautiful starting point with regard to the application of liberal religious principles to families. In a responsive reading entitled "Love and Understanding," first published in 1956, he invites us to offer generous and compassionate attention for all people who are part of families: "We will gather a store of love for our children . . . We will make a world for the gladness of children, bringing to them the conviction of their worth and beauty which their beings crave. We will gather a store of love for youth . . . We will find useful tasks for their hands, that they may learn to create with clean joy. . . . We will gather a store of love for parents . . . Our chief labor is the building of homes . . . We will gather a store of love for the aged . . . Our land will be a large home for the elders." [6] Thus, Patton offers the reassurance that everyone in a family deserves love. In other words, everyone deserves a place of honor and respect in a family, including children, youth, parents, grandparents, and presumably other family members as well. Patton also writes: "Our chief labor is the building of homes," offering reassurance that families are indeed of central importance for liberal religious people no less than for conservative religious people. From this starting point, let us move on to see whether or not we can identify a characteristic Unitarian Universalist understanding of successful and effective parenting. One of the central affirmations of Unitarian Universalism is a trusting optimism in the capacity of human beings to work things out in satisfactory ways. We maintain this optimism despite our acquaintance with the tragic limitations and destructive tendencies of human nature. As Unitarian Universalists, we hold this optimism for children and youth as well as for adults. Thus, our child dedication ceremonies are not intended as a symbolic washing away of something sinful, but rather as a recognition of the spark of the divine in each person, even in children and youth, and as a celebration of the promise and potential of every human being. William Ellery Channing, perhaps the foremost Unitarian preacher at the time of its origins in the early years of the nineteenth century, wrote: "The great end in religious instruction is not to stamp our minds upon the young, but to stir up their own; not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly with their own; . . . not to form an outward regularity, but to touch inward springs; . . . not to impose religion upon them in the form of arbitrary rules, but to awaken the conscience, the moral discernment." [7] In Channing's words we find an expression of optimism with regard to what may be found in the hearts and minds and souls of children and youth. Are their minds stirred up? They have the capacity to come to satisfactory conclusions on their own. Are they looking inquiringly with their own eyes? They have the capacity to make satisfactory observations about the world. Are they touching their own inward springs? Their inward springs are trustworthy sources of creativity and vision. Are they seeking moral guidance from their own consciences? They have the capacity to make morally honorable choices. Of course, Channing was not suggesting that children come into the world fully equipped with saintly personalities. Rather, Channing believed that individuals need training and instruction, example and encouragement, critique and correction. But if Channing was not suggesting that children are born civilized and spiritually mature, neither was he suggesting that children have something destructively misguided about them that needs to be suppressed. Ellen Goodman suggests that Dr. James Dobson promotes discipline as the key to successful and effective parenting. I would agree that discipline can be one of several elements of successful and effective parenting, but not the only element or even the most important element. Parents must have other elements, other resources, as well. What are these other elements of successful and effective parenting? I claim no special expertise as a parent, but it seems to me that other essential elements of successful and effective parenting are personality traits that allow a parent to demonstrate optimism with regard to the capacities of children and youth. This would include a parent's own emotional maturity; respect for the thoughts and feelings of a child; respect for the basic human rights of a child; patience; the ability to listen carefully to what a child says; playfulness and a sense of humor; and a parent's active involvement with his or her own purpose and passion in life. Twenty-five hundred years ago, Aristotle said: "Anyone can become angry-that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right thing, for the right purpose, and in the right way-this is not easy." [8] We might paraphrase this and say: "Anyone can offer discipline-that is easy. But to offer discipline toward the right person, to the right degree, about the right thing, for the right purpose, in the right way, and in the right combination with all the other elements of successful and effective parenting-this is not easy." At the heart of good parenting, perhaps, is setting a good example of what it means to be a mature, responsible, loving, healthy person. Children, after all, are much more influenced by what adults do than by what adults say. Do you want your children to exhibit this or that virtue, this or that good habit, this or that way of relating to other people? Then set a good example. Make this or that virtue part of your own personal practice. Make this or that good habit part of your own basic behavior. Make this or that way of relating to other people something that you do. This approach, too, is grounded in discipline, but this approach focuses first on self-discipline for the parents. Edwin Friedman, the rabbi and psychologist who applied family systems principles to congregations, offered this definition of differentiation: "Differentiation means the capacity of a family member to define his or her own life's goals and values apart from surrounding togetherness pressures, to say 'I' when others are demanding 'you' and 'we.'" [9] Friedman suggested that differentiation is a principal goal of the process of emotional growth. Individuals who have achieved some measure of differentiation are more emotionally mature. But Friedman did not imply that the process of differentiation required a person to be distant or detached from other people. The trick is to maintain one's individual boundaries while remaining connected to others. It seems to me that the process of differentiation is remarkably similar to the process of using principles of liberal religion to guide one's daily life. I trust my own abilities and opinions, and I respect your abilities and opinions. I appreciate my own experience, and I am open to your experience. I have a healthy sense of self-respect with regard to my conclusions, and I have a healthy sense of intellectual humility with regard to your conclusions. This is the attitude of a person who has achieved some measure of differentiation, maintaining individual boundaries while remaining connected with others. This is also the attitude encouraged by liberal religion: affirming one's own religious insights and conclusions in a way that does not shut out the insights and conclusions of others. Can children and youth come to have trust for their own abilities and opinions while having respect for the abilities and opinions of others? I'd like to think so. I'd even like to hold this up as a central goal of successful and effective parenting. But this is very different from the central issue for Dr. James Dobson, which is answering the questions, "Who is going to win?" or "Who is in charge here?" Several values follow from the goal of growing to trust one's own abilities and opinions and growing to respect the abilities and opinions of others. These values include: an affirmation of justice or fairness; an affirmation of peaceful methods of conflict resolution; a compassionate awareness of our interdependence with one another; the importance of having a voice and a vote about things which affect one's life. Translated into public policy, these values are as follows: an affirmation of basic human rights for all people; an affirmation of democracy as an equitable way of affirming multiple and sometimes conflicting interests in society; resistance to concentrations and uses of wealth that threaten democracy; encouragement for individuals and communities to tell their own stories in their own ways and resistance to authoritarian attempts to ignore or suppress or distort some stories; recognition that different individuals and communities may have different experiences and may therefore come to different conclusions in religion, politics, social customs, and cultural expression; openness to different kinds of families, including families headed by gay and lesbian couples; acceptance of domestic and international social obligations as a reflection of human interdependence. What I have presented in my sermon this morning is a response to Ellen Goodman's challenge to identify progressive values that begin with successful and effective parenting but also extend into politics. I began with our Unitarian Universalist optimism with regard to the capacity of human beings to work things our in satisfactory ways, used that as a basis for a less authoritarian way of parenting, and extended that sense of respect for self and others still further as a basis for progressive social values. I offer these thoughts in the hope that others will take this conversation further. I would like to conclude my sermon with three questions about how an affirmation of these values might apply to our congregation. First, how can our church best support families when they discover, in one way or another, that the religious values affirmed in our church differ from the values affirmed by the majority of other families? Second, given that we now have one hundred and sixty children and youth enrolled in our Sunday morning religious education program, what resources and procedures would we need to be able to include two hundred children and youth in our religious community, along with their parents? And third, how can we best provide love and understanding that recognizes that all of us are here not as isolated individuals, but as people who are, in one way or another, members of families? 1. David M. Kennedy, Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression
and War, 1929 - 1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 229. © 2005 by David Herndon |
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