The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, Oregon

Publications

Illuminating Evil

by Kate Lore

UUCS August 13, 2006

This past March I had the pleasure of speaking with the Rev. Fred Sykes. His name probably doesn’t ring a bell for most of you, but I’m pretty sure some of you have at least seen his picture. He was one of the men at Martin Luther King Jr.’s side when Dr. King was assassinated in 1968.

Rev. Sykes and Dr. King had been close friends. They were both Black Baptist ministers from the South working for the right of Blacks to vote. Whenever Dr. King came through town, the two men always made a point of sharing a meal and conversation. In fact, Rev. Sykes had just gone to Dr. King’s motel room to take him home for dinner when Dr. King’s life was abruptly ended by a bullet.

Of course Rev. Sykes was devastated by the murder. Not only had he lost a personal friend, he was forced to face a future without the persuasive passion and skill of a key leader. It was a critical blow to the Movement. When I asked him more about it, Rev. Sykes told me that the first couple of years after Martin’s assassination were some of the most difficult in his life. But, he told me, it was a long time ago; he had moved on.  "Moved on?" I asked, "How does someone move on from such a tragedy, after such a thundering and evil blow to the psyche of our country?"

At that point he chuckled, took my hand in his and told me a story. I could tell it was one that he had told many times before and it went like this:

One night when Robert Louis Stevenson was a young child, his nanny just couldn't get him to sleep. Young Robert just kept staring out the window, oblivious to her talking to him. Finally, she said, "Robert, what in the world are you looking at out there?"  As she pulled back the curtain, she realized he was watching the lamplighter making his way down the street, lighting one street lamp after another.  Young Robert Louis Stevenson saw something more.  He said, "Look at that man, Nanna! He's punching holes in the darkness! He’s punching holes in the darkness!"

Then Rev. Sykes told me that the hate that killed Dr. King was just one example of the spiritual darkness that exists all around us. And that he had decided long ago to commit himself to punching holes in that darkness by letting God’s love shine through him. Sometimes the holes he punched were small, such as when he showed up with joy on his face instead of gloom.  Other times the holes were bigger−like when he helped someone who was struggling.  The holes that Dr. King had punched, on the other hand, were HUGE and were in fact still growing as more people read his words or honored his memory.

"So would you say it was love that ultimately saved you?" I asked.  "Yes, ma’am," he replied, "God’s love." There was something very touching about the wayA Rev. Syke’s faith was so central to his healing.  No, I would never be able to relate totally with his Baptist faith, but I knew that there was some lesson for me in his words.  You see, I’d just had a brush with evil and was still struggling to make theological sense out of it.

Just one day before my dinner with Rev. Sykes, I had been crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge with two friends. Those of you who know your civil rights history will recall that this bridge was the site of ‘Bloody Sunday.’ That was the day when Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to lead a group of protesters from Selma to Montgomery to lay Jimmy Lee Jackson’s dead black body at the steps of the Capitol. Jackson was a young church deacon who had been killed by state troopers in his own church.  He had put his body between them and his grandma, whom they were beating, and these troopers wanted to make an example of him. Jimmy Lee’s death sparked outrage in the community which is why the march had been organized. Church-going folks of all ages had gathered and were just stepping onto the bridge when they were met by hoards of armed troopers who quickly descended upon them with clubs and tear gas. Those of you who are my age or older may very well have seen news footage of this horrific scene. I have seen it over and over in my lifetime and it still gets to me. The reason why it is shown so often is that it exemplifies the challenges faced by Blacks during that time and the courage they displayed in response to it.  Bloody Sunday is considered a key turning point in Martin Luther King’s ministry.

So it was significant that my two girlfriends, Wendy and Petra and I were making a trek across that very bridge the prior day. We were women of three different races who felt a common yearning to retrace the heroic steps taken on this bridge. So there we were, walking slowly over the crest of the bridge in a very prayerful state, when a car full of young white men came careening towards us−practically running us down. My friend, Petra, wrote a poem about what happened next, of which I’ll read a portion:

Suddenly we felt the hurl of a

Curse, all too familiar,

Pulling that age old trigger,

As a passing driver called out, "Nigger!"

On our sacred walk through time,

We were jolted back to the present

To the sting and the burn

--In a word!

Wendy turned to us and questioned,

With the nod of our heads and heavy hearts,

We confirmed the word she’d heard.

From the weight of the hate thrown at us

Kate began to cry.

And I was Angry for the power

They were still able to hold over us.

Saddened that words of hate are still commonplace, as if no step was ever taken.

But embraced—all three,

Ministers to be,

Black, White, Latina.

Yes, the three of us were stunned by this sacrilege, this flippant act of racism. Wendy responded with shock and disbelief, I with sorrow and Petra with anger.  We had encountered evil and we knew it.  And as if by instinct, the first thing we did after the car drove away was embrace each other. 

In the days that followed that event, Petra, Wendy and I spent a lot of time reflecting upon the meaning of the bridge incident. In the process, our friendship deepened, and so did our resolve to develop anti-racism resources for seminarians.  In fact, we had just got a $12,000 grant to do just that.  

In the months that have passed since returning from my trip through the South, I have read book after book about evil.  It’s as if I must somehow figure it all out before I can adequately address and transform it.  But then I think about Rev. Sykes and his simple faith in the power of God’s love.  Maybe opening up to love is the answer.  Maybe there is even a gift in our brushes with evil–if those events forge new understandings, deepen relationships and prompt increased level of commitment.  It’s hard to know if Rev. Sykes would be so inspiring today if he hadn’t endured great evil.  But I do know that even my 19 year-old has figured out that some of the best people are those who endure great suffering but still commit themselves to the power of love.

So far I’ve been using the word ‘evil’ frequently without the courtesy of defining the word for you.  Sorry about that.  I should tell you that after all the books I’ve read, I like Reinhold Niebuhr’s definition the best.  He says, "Evil is always the assertion of some interest without regard to the whole, whether the whole be conceived as the immediate community or the total community of humanity or the total order of the world."  Good, on the other hand, is the intention for the common good, the harmony of the whole.  Whether talking about racism, war, or environmental degradation, evil takes place when the desires of a few outweigh the good of the whole.  And the reason why I’m focusing on evil today is because I am worried about the state of our country.  It appears to me, at least, that we have institutionalized evil.  How?  By supporting policies that benefit a few at the expense of the many.

It is tragically easy for us to fool ourselves into believing we’re acting nobly toward large and worthy ends, when in reality we’re only masking our own self-interest. Collectively, it seems quite clear that Americans want economic and military dominance in this world and we will do anything to ensure both—even if it involves destroying countries in the name of saving them.  Witness the Middle East today.

Now I’m not saying that Americans are evil−that has not been my experience at all.  Yet I am reminded of the experience of UU theologian, James Luther Adams.  When he was a young Unitarian minister and newly appointed professor of theology at Meadville-Lombard Theological School, he went to Germany in 1935 to study with some of the greatest theologians of the time.  While there, he confronted a deeply unsettling fact: Germany's churches were ineffectively resisting the rise of Nazism.  A convert to Unitarianism from Baptist fundamentalism, Adams had high expectations for Germany's long tradition of liberal theology.  A century earlier, Unitarians had found the inspiration for Transcendentalism in the new German theology of their day.  But German liberalism didn't foresee the Nazi threat−nor did it seem to offer adequate resources for resistance. Adams came to admire the German ‘Confessing Church’ movement, whose members did actively oppose Hitler at great personal risk.  He later described the impact of his experience:

Let me put it autobiographically and say that in Nazi Germany I soon came to the question, “What is it in my preaching and my political action that would stop this?"  It is a liberal attitude to say that we keep ourselves informed and read the best papers on these matters, and perhaps join a voluntary association now and then.  But to be involved with other people so that it costs and so that one exposes the evils of society requires something like conversion, something more than an attitude.  It requires a sense that there's something wrong and I must be different from the way I have been.

Adams's experience in Europe left a lasting mark on his thinking.  Adams became famous as a teacher and mentor to a generation of scholars and ministers.  Widely regarded as the most important Unitarian Universalist theologian of the twentieth century, he championed themes that have never been UU favorites, among them conversion and sacrifice, conflict and discipline. Without them, Adams believed, liberal religion becomes complacent, accommodating cultural trends that distort truly liberal values when resistance is what is called for.   He became the leading exponent of the liberal church as "the prophethood of all believers," an institution whose people−rooted in shared spiritual values−learn to judge and correct their society.  I think the time to do that is upon us now.

Last month I hosted a brown bag lunch conversation on evil here at the church.  It was tremendously helpful, and the participants provoked a lot of good, new thinking in me.  I wish I could share everything that was said that day and the follow-up conversations that took place.  Let me take a moment to publicly thank all who came, and to encourage sharing your thoughts during our time of congregational response. 

Although my theology on evil continues to evolve−and let me assure you, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to thoroughly grasp it−I have come to the conclusion that there will always be evil in and around us.  This is because I believe that evil is inherent to the structure of our world and that it is, in fact, required for life to be sustained.  But that doesn’t mean we should be complacent in its presence.  There are times—and this is one of them—when evil gains such a stronghold that it threatens everyone’s survival.  So even though the word ‘evil’ is still a trigger for some of us, I think we must get past our discomfort and engage in some serious conversation about it.  Paul Tillich reminds us that every generation in every nation has to decide whether we act for or against the law of love. It is part of the human experience. And if we are going to support the law of love during these difficult times, as Rev. Sykes did during the Civil Rights Movement, I think we must become more comfortable naming and challenging evil —both in ourselves and in the social fabric.

So how do we do that?  James Luther Adams provides us some guidance.  He well understood the great American innovation of ‘voluntary associations’--the same phenomenon deTocqueville publicized in the 1800s.  Adams took the Christian imperative, “by their fruits ye shall know them,” and expanded it to: ‘by their groups you will know them.’ That is, he claimed that the only way to practice modern faith had to be within a voluntary association—the only structure capable of counteracting the power of modern corporations and governments.

Church, argued Adams, is where we learn how to be human.  This is because churches are built by people who want to create communities of meaning, conscience, hope, and transformative love.  Congregations, then, provide the best places to discern−with others−what is real, ultimate, and worthy of our love, worthy of devotion, time, and commitment.   

So what is great and worthy enough of our love and devotion, our loyalty and commitment?  I would suggest it’s something the size of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, our highest principles and purpose.  It’s something the size of the sacred scriptures of all the world’s religions. It’s something the size of the sacred web of all existence.  And what is worthy of our greatest love and loyalty is also worthy of the time it takes to envision exactly what shape and form all this might take in the real world.

Adams thought the practices in the congregation should be different from those of secular society.  He talked of “the disciplines of the spirit.”  Today we talk about ‘spiritual practice.’  I believe it is time for people who practice liberal religion to gather together in the spiritual practice of love.  If you feel love inside the walls of this church, hold on to that feeling.  Let it grow inside you.  Let it become you.  Let the beauty of humanity overwhelm your soul, because in the end there is nothing more important, and nothing more healing nor more redemptive than love.  And in this spirit of love, let us make a plan for change, joining together with others to put it into action.  For example, this September 3rd, John Roy Wilson and Salam A. Noor will be preaching about the Middle East conflict.  I’d like to encourage you all to be present.  

Like Adams, I put my hope in all of you.  I believe that the very qualities that define this church and our larger denomination−your minds, your hearts, your moral courage−are the very qualities that can overcome both the evil without and the evil within.  And perhaps can even save the world.

May it be so.