Embracing Our Fifth Principle: The Good Fight

Martha Hodges - 2007-05-27

“We affirm and promote the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large”. How did this one make it into our Principles? First of all, it seems like kind of a no-brainer. Who doesn’t affirm following one’s conscience – acting morally and ethically? And what American would argue against the right to participate in self-government? Well, as is true of all seven of our Unitarian Universalist principles, this one is not so obvious if we really think about its implications. Some may also wonder how something that certainly sounds like a political statement found its way into these Principles – the closest thing we UUs have to a statement of faith. What’s religious about our fifth principle?

There is a theological basis for both parts of this statement. When we affirm the right of conscience, we affirm the belief that each of us is capable of independent judgment. Not only that. We affirm that we are all responsible for exercising this judgment. We are not told by holy book or priest what to think or believe. In proclaiming the right of conscience, we insist on the value of free thought – the very essence of liberal religion.

Freedom of thought – the assumption that everyone, regardless of gender or class or education or background – that everyone is capable of individual discernment of right and wrong – is also the foundational assumption underlying the democratic process. This faith in the human capacity to form judgments and act on them is a theological assumption about the source of moral authority. Moreover, this affirmation of democracy suggests that we humans are creators of our own futures and not the mere pawns of the gods or fate or some master plan. It assumes the existence of free will – a deeply theological position.

So this most worldly-sounding of our principles does, in fact, rely on some religious assumptions. What’s more, this statement about the value of the individual conscience and the right to self-determination, if we look at it a bit more deeply, turns out to be complex, even bafflingly so, when we attempt to apply it to our lives.

Think about this: Aren’t the individual conscience and the democratic process often at odds with one another? What are we to do when our conscience tells us one thing and the will of the majority or of our elected representatives dictates another? Which value trumps the other? Do we continue to insist on the correctness of our personal judgment? Or do we defer to the right of the majority to determine what is best for us? How do we decide which fights are worth fighting? What is “the good fight?”

A good fight is one that we can justify morally – that’s supported by conscience – and not just by its odds of success or its utilitarian value. Think about war, for example. The war that is considered worth fighting is one that is consistent with what we believe to be our national values. Not one fought for gain or power, but for a worthier end. For the liberation of a people, in self-defense or against genocide. Governments, including our own, are expert in employing – some might say, manipulating – our consciences in order to support wars that are fought for ends unworthy of our highest ideals and impulses, including religious ones.

Such a war is also the field on which the struggle between individual conscience and democracy plays out. In the days of my early adulthood, my male cohort faced just such a struggle. These were the Vietnam years and, thanks to the draft, few young men were exempt from having to search their consciences in this way. Should they resist the draft? Protest the war? Emigrate to Canada? Or serve the supposed will of the people by obeying the call of the military, the decisions of our elected leaders? What was the moral thing to do? Every young man had to confront this question.

Then, as now, those people – those very young people – who chose to serve their country in combat situations did not escape the call of individual conscience once they were in the heart of conflict. The military is not a democratic institution. Soldiers must learn to obey orders without questioning. The last thing they are expected to do is to examine their consciences when given a command, to decide whether or not it is consistent with their personal sense of morality. They would often perish or cause the deaths of their fellows if they paused to listen to their inner voices.

And yet, we see again and again examples of men and women who, against orders, followed their consciences. There were such at My Lai, such at Abu Ghraib. There are free thinkers in the army, and we celebrate them. We celebrate their right of conscience. And what of us civilians? What are we called to do in times of war?

What are we called to do when democracy has apparently failed us and our leaders lack the gumption or the wisdom to end an unjust war? Are we called to support their decisions because we are committed to the democratic system that elected them – the system that, at its best, results in decisions that reflect our collective will, but too often leads our representatives to make choices based on political expediency or personal gain or lust for power?

Our Unitarian Universalist history is rich with examples of protest and civil disobedience. From Servetus, burned at the stake in Geneva, to Thoreau, jailed for withholding his taxes in protest, to the suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Olympia Brown, to the martyrs of the civil rights movement Viola Liuzzo and James Reeb. But what have we done for humanity lately?

How much are we called to sacrifice for our consciences? Our wealth? Our freedom? Our lives? How do we decide when to fight the good fight?

I don’t claim to know the answer, but here are some of my thoughts on the subject.

Let’s assume we’re convinced of the moral correctness of our position. That alone is not enough reason to take up arms, figuratively speaking. We ask ourselves, What’s really at stake here? One of the things to be lost or gained may be alliances or other relationships. What do you risk by taking a position or, alternatively, refusing to engage in the conflict? The trust or friendship or respect of someone you admire or care for? Just how much is that worth to you?

If you take a political or religious stand that is abhorrent to your family, for example, will they defend your right to differ with them or will they shun you? What if it’s a question of how you raise your children? Can you explain to your kids that “It’s okay to do that at home, but we don’t do that in front of grandma?” Would you allow grandma to spank your kids in order to avoid a confrontation with her about your child-rearing practices? Probably not, because you’d feel that the cost to your child would be too great. But what about if grandma wants your child to go to Mass with her on Christmas, or drink all his milk?

I remember very well my aunt forcing me to sit at the breakfast table after everyone else had left until I ate all my burnt scrambled eggs. The eggs grew colder and more repulsive by the minute and that fresh-squeezed orange juice was slimy with pulp. I was six years old and we were visitors in her home. I recall gagging as I tried to get those eggs down, I who was raised in a home where we were never required to eat anything we didn’t like. This happened morning after morning. What was my mother thinking, I wonder to this day? She evidently didn’t think it was worth getting into an argument with my aunt or insulting her cooking. Fortunately for me, my sister would eventually come to the rescue by eating the disgusting mess on my plate when my aunt wasn’t looking. I’m still in her debt.

And of course, many of us decide not to risk alienating family by coming out to them if we are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. There is nothing dishonorable in that decision if we decide that allowing family to more completely know who we are, that being free to share important news about our intimate relationships, is less important than our need for family approval, or our concern for parents’ peace of mind or their need to hold on to their illusions about us. No one else can presume to make those choices for us.

We consider such costs and we also consider the long-term ramifications of our decision, as well as their breadth and depth. Will your position affect generations to come? Will it affect just yourself, or hundreds or even thousands of other people? And will that effect be deep and life-changing, or will it be fairly trivial? What do you – and others – stand to gain or lose by your decision to fight the good fight or to look away?

Will somebody else take up the cause if you choose not to? Or are you the only one who can do it? What are your odds of winning? While that phrase, “fighting the good fight,” is almost always associated with lost causes, they may turn out to be hopeless only in retrospect. Yesterday’s lost cause can be today’s given – as with the antislavery movement or female suffrage. Considered in that light, the light of history, the odds of success may not be a reliable criterion to go by.

Perhaps the most important question you can ask yourself – the bottom line – is this: whether your decision will compromise your self-respect – you sense of worth – your sense of who you are.

Now, one of the lessons of ministry I’ve learned and am continuing to learn is when not to fight for my opinion, or my conscience. Before I knew better, I would have assumed that ministers must, by the very nature of their work, be taking stands right and left, clearly and immovably. After all, isn’t that what integrity is all about? Well, imagine my surprise as I discovered that integrity can mean keeping your opinion to yourself. As with many other challenging tasks, a lot of ministry, our teachers tell us, is just about showing up. Another big part of ministry, I’ve found out, is knowing when to keep your mouth shut. When to be supportive of others’ right to decide, even if those decisions seem unwise to us.

Fighting the good fight, it turns out, means weighing all those considerations, all those costs and benefits, those consequences and possible consequences – and then picking your battles carefully. Very carefully. Not every hill is one to die on. And some are.

In congregational life, this is true for members as well as ministers. Here, what is at stake may be your conscience on the one hand and the health of the church community on the other. If the membership makes a decision you don’t agree with, it’s necessary to balance your displeasure against your respect for the democratic process by which that decision was reached. Conversely, you may believe that the health of the community demands that you do take up the battle for the minority view.

It’s really not so different from the dilemmas that face us as family members or citizens. Does the greater good outweigh our self-interest or our sense of what’s right? And how is the greater good best served? By standing up, insisting on our point of view or by remaining silent? Or by some combination of these?

We affirm and promote the right of conscience because our sense of right and wrong is uniquely human. It gives us meaning and purpose. And it is a gift that, ironically, can only be nurtured and exercised in community. For it is only in community that we can measure the power and wisdom of conscience. And it is only in community that we can struggle with the contradictions into which it leads us.

It is through these struggles that we become wiser, more generous, more courageous and, ultimately, happier. It is through these struggles that we move the human project forward. It is in this struggle that hope is found – hope for ourselves and hope for a world that is both peaceful and just.