Voting on the Side of Love

Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for President of the United States on April 12, 2015. Donald Trump announced his presidential bid the next month, on June 16. So if you feel like this campaign has been going on forever, it has been going for a year-and-a-half. But as you may have heard a little something about, Election Day will finally arrive tomorrow! 

The volatility of this election season inspired me to take a step back from the daily headlines and consider the history of our democratic process.  (But stick with me, and I will pivot halfway through this post to how this relates to voting on the side of love today.) In reading Pauline Maier’s excellent book American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence, I was reminded that less than a year before the Second Continental Congress would gather in Philadelphia to sign the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, “Even the most radical members of Congress professed a strong preference for remaining in the [British] Empire” (21). As late as August 25, 1775, Jefferson himself, future author of our Declaration of Independence, wrote in a private letter that his strong preference was to mend ties with Britain. At that time, there remained hope that a middle way might be found so that the thirteen colonies would become free from the control of the British Parliament, but would retain an allegiance to the British Crown. But Parliament was unwilling to compromise: the colonists could be either entirely under Parliament, or they could fight to be outside the British system (23).

So we declared our independence with these opening words:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Consider how bold a claim that was. The U.S. may be a global superpower today, but 240 years ago, Britain’s population was three times larger, the British navy was the military superpower, and Britain had far more financial resources — whereas “The Continental Congress had no power to tax and consequently, little power to borrow.” Nevertheless, as Danielle Allen has explored in her important book, Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, we — thirteen colonies with a Continental Congress that had been operating a mere two years — declared ourselves to hold a “separate and equal station” to a British political and legal system which dated back more than seven centuries to the 1066 invasion of William the Conqueror (119-120).

And that was just the opening sentence. Turning to the even more famous — and much longer! — second sentence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

That is all one sentence. I have taken the time to quote it in the midst of this brutal presidential election to remind us of some of our highest values: that at our best in this country we have continued to expand the circle of who is included and who has access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In that spirit, I want to invite you to reflect on just one more sentence from the Declaration of Independence, which also seems particularly resonant at this time in our nation’s history. The  Declaration’s third sentence reminds us that our founders, who themselves wanted to avoid division from Britain, also cautioned against further declarations of independence. As we saw 150 years ago in the Civil War, this is no abstract concern. The Confederates States of America tried to declare independence from the union. But in the words of our original Declaration: “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

There’s a lot more to say about the history and significance of the Declaration of Independence. I would love, for instance, to get into the details of how Jefferson’s original draft was changed by both a drafting committee as well as the Continental Congress itself (67-76). I would also love to say more about how the bold claim that we have a “separate and equal station” to Britain was perverted by the Supreme Court’s 1896 “Plessy v. Ferguson” decision to use “separate but equal” as a cynical justification for racial segregation. But instead, I would like to invite us to shift our focus to potential parallels today.

We have been exploring the boldness of the fledgling thirteen colonies declaring themselves “separate and equal” to the British Empire. But I invite you to consider that the boldness we need today is not another Declaration of Independence. We are already too divided from one another, too separate, too individualistic. We need a similarly bold Declaration of Interdependence that reminds us how much we need each other, helps us take better care of one another, and assures each of us that we will be taken care of.

As one example of what such a Declaration of Interdependence might look like, I invite you to consider the nonpartisan Higher Ground Moral Declaration, collaboratively written in this midst of this presidential election season by many progressive religious leaders in our country:

We declare that the deepest public concerns of our nation and faith traditions are how our society treats the poor, those on the margins, the least of these, women, children, workers, immigrants and the sick; equality and representation under the law; and the desire for peace, love and harmony within and among nations. Together, we lift up and defend the most sacred moral principles of our faith and constitutional values, which are:

• the economic liberation of all people;
• ensuring every child receives access to quality education;
• healthcare access for all;
• criminal justice reform; and
• ensuring historically marginalized communities have equal protection under the law.

Our moral traditions have a firm foundation upon which to stand against the divide-and-conquer strategies of extremists. We believe in a moral agenda that stands against systemic racism, classism, poverty, xenophobia, and any attempt to promote hate towards any members of the human family. We claim a higher ground in partisan debate by returning public discourse to our deepest moral and constitutional values.

The “Higher Ground Moral Declaration” is an attempt to start not with defending a political candidate (or defaming a political opponent) — but instead to start with discerning the moral and ethical values that our conscience calls us toward, and then allowing individuals to use those values, in whatever way feels right to them, to determine which candidate to support.

To translate this perspective into a the language of my own Unitarian Universalist tradition, we talk a lot about “Standing on the Side of Love” or “Answering the Call of Love;” so what might it look like to “vote on the side of love?” Here’s one response that transforms the UU Seven Principles into questions for political candidates:

• Do your policy proposals reflect the inherent worth and dignity of every person?

• If elected, how will your everyday decisions demonstrate justice, equity and compassion in human relations?

• How will you encourage acceptance and growth in one another across party lines?

• What insights have you learned from your own search for truth and meaning that will guide you as a political leader?

• What ideas do you have to improve our democratic process?

• Within our international community, how will you work towards a goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all?

• Acknowledging our interdependence, how will your decisions impact our planet and future generations?

There may well be other factors that influence your choice of candidate, and that is your right. But the Higher Ground Moral Declaration and these questions for “voting on the side of love” are ways to factor progressive religious values into our discernment of conscience and our democratic process.

As The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his book The Strength to Love:

The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.

In the words of the High Ground Moral Declaration, recapturing our prophetic zeal for such a time as this means taking action for causes such as “economic democracy, equality in education, healthcare for all, criminal justice reform, and equal protection under the law” — though ultimately the details are left up to the discernment of your conscience. In that spirit, on Election Day and beyond, may we each continue to discern how we are called to act for peace and justice in the world.

The Rev. Dr. Carl Gregg is a trained spiritual director, a D.Min. graduate of San Francisco Theological Seminary, and the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Frederick, Maryland. Follow him on Facebook (facebook.com/carlgregg) and Twitter (@carlgregg).

Learn more about Unitarian Universalism: http://www.uua.org/beliefs/principles