Rev. Joanna Adams Address to Georgia's WIN List June 22, 2004 The Carter Center

Why the Religious Right Isn't Always Right

How wonderful it is for me to be with you tonight, and how grateful I am for Melita Easters’ most gracious introduction, which put me in mind of something the late, very funny Dorothy Parker used to say: “The truth is all well and good, but I prefer flattery any time.” My sentiments exactly.

I love being with you, a select group of extraordinary women who can make a tremendous difference in the lives of the people of our state at a time when courageous leadership and civic commitment have never been more needed or less in evidence. For those of you who are candidates for public office, I have good news and bad news. It has been said that “whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult!”

We have been having such a fine time already this evening—greeting old friends, making new connections, and enjoying good food and drink, it almost seems a shame to have to get down to business, but we have a few matters that need tending to. Cute Lily Tomlin likes to say that if we didn’t have any problems to deal with, every day would end around 10:30 in the morning.

I wish we could just enjoy our canapés and talk about how hot it is in Georgia in June, where they say that this year, our farmers are having to feed their chickens crushed ice to keep them from laying hard boiled eggs. I love hot, muggy, asphalt melting weather, by the way. I have just spent two years in Chicago where a heat wave is considered anything above minus 10 degrees, and keeping up with your mittens is a matter of life and death.

Wherever one lives, there is nothing one can do about the weather. There is, however, a great deal that can be done about the self-righteous, liberty-threatening climate the Religious Right is creating this year in the United States of America. There is a great deal that needs to be done in the next five months before the election, lest our nation and our state move even further to the right, lest the great principles upon which this country was founded end up being sold down the river. Among the greatest of those principles is the brilliantly innovative idea of the separation of church and state. (I prefer the term “religion and state” so as not to privilege Christianity over the other faith traditions that make up the richly diverse fabric of American society.)

I remind you that when our nation was founded, less than seven percent of the inhabitants of the 13 colonies were members of churches. The framers of the original charters of our government had learned from the excesses of history that those civil authorities who claim to rule by divine right or establish one religion to the exclusion of other religions always do so at the expense of freedom. Dissidents are persecuted; divergent views are outlawed. Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence, was a deist who published his own Bible, leaving out parts he didn’t like. Among Jefferson’s proudest achievements was his Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, passed by the General Assembly of Virginia, the first law of its kind in our country. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees both the right of religious expression and the protection of American citizens from government participation in religious life and from the establishment of any one religion over another.

But here we are in 2004 with an Office for Faith Based Initiatives located in the White House. Here we are with a constitutional amendment coming before the voters of Georgia this fall prohibiting same sex marriages on the basis of what the Christian Coalition’s Sadie Fields says the Bible says. Here we are with Georgia judicial candidates being asked to pass a conservative litmus test.

The problem is that as a nation, we are in danger of losing our balance, and we simply have to do something about it this November. Let me be personal for a moment. This spring I decided to get in shape, if you know what I mean. I went to a personal trainer. “We are going to work on your core,” the trainer said to me. That turned out to involve several activities I hope no other living soul will ever see me engaged in. It also involved learning how to balance myself on a balance board. The first time I tried it, I lasted 11 seconds. The last time, two full minutes!  It can be done! 

In addition to filling the voting booths with Democrats this November, you and I need to know how to talk about why the Religious Right is wrong, not in a mean-spirited way but in civil, intelligent terms, and, for those of us whose identity is shaped by our faith traditions, with genuine religious conviction. Anna Quinlan is a good role model in this regard. She had a fabulously helpful “fit” in print a few months ago when she received a letter from a reader who said that he was not only going to mention God, he was going to capitalize the God because he knew it made liberals like her crazy. Quinlan, a devout Roman Catholic, wanted to know when it first became gospel that only conservatives could know God! 

The polls seem to bolster this idea, with a new Time magazine poll showing that those who consider themselves very religious support Bush over Kerry, 59 to 35%. Yet, most Americans are somewhere in the middle. In fact, those who describe themselves as church goers a few times a month were more likely to have supported the Democratic candidates in the last set of elections than the conservative Republican candidates. Like Anna Quinlan, I want to know who says you can’t be a moral, pro-family, God-fearing person…and a Democrat! 

Let me tell you who I am. I am a baptized Christian. I was ordained as a Presbyterian minister 25 years ago, in 1979, the same year Jerry Falwell held one if his “Stand Up for America” rallies on the steps of the Georgia State Capitol. Because I served a church directly across the street from the Capitol at the time, I could not avoid the vitriolic message he delivered that day against feminists and gay people and any people who did not see the world as he and the Religious Right saw it—in patriarchal, homophobic, if-you-are-not-with-us-you-are-against-us-and-against-the-teachings-of–the-Bible sorts of ways.

The Religious Right has cleaned up its act in recent years. The rhetoric is quieter, the strategies are more subtle, and the victories more consistent. A 1994 survey by the Washington magazine Campaigns and Elections found that of the eleven southern states, nine had state Republican parties that were controlled or substantially influenced by the Religious Right. Ralph Reed, our own GOP Georgian and former leader of the Christian Coalition, expresses delight in the progress the religious conservative movement has made, in part because it succeeded in electing George W. Bush and other friendly leaders. “You’re no longer throwing rocks at the building; you’re in the building!” he once exclaimed to cohorts.

If we leave the building in the hands of the Religious Right, the whole enterprise that is America is in peril. Why do I make such a claim? Because I, too, have read the Bible. It was in the Bible that I heard the voices of the prophets thundering against injustice and indifference to the needs of the poor. Because I am a Bible-believing Christian, I have searched every single one of the gospels to find out what Jesus had to say about homosexuality. As far as the Biblical record goes, he never mentioned it. He did, however, have a lot to say about those who paraded their religion in front of other people. He advised them to retreat to their prayer closets. He did say that whoever was without sin should cast the first stone. He did tell a beautiful story about a shepherd who even though he had 99 sheep safely in the fold, went out looking for the one that was missing. He opened his arms to those whom the religious establishment of his day rejected. He said, “Judge not lest you be judged.” He asked, “Why don’t you worry about the beam in your own eye before you talk about the beam that is in your neighbor’s eye?”

           According to the gospels, Jesus did not say a word about abortion either, but he treated women with respect and invited them to be full members of the community that followed him, implying that women are just as capable of moral agency as men.

          Here is a story that I have not told in fifteen years, because it is painful to tell and almost unbearable to hear, but as women who are pro-choice, we must remember that the Christian Right has not cornered the market on morality. The General Assembly of my Presbyterian denomination, which has consistently passed a pro-choice position since 1970, has three resolutions coming before its annual gathering in Richmond, Virginia next week, each of which seeks to turn back the tide.

I have a friend who is a pastor in Wyoming. He is a father and a grandfather, and if you met him, you would think you had just met the patriarch of the old Waltons television show. I don’t know whether he is a Republican or a Democrat, but he tells about a family in his rural congregation—a mother and two daughters, one fifteen and one thirteen. The fifteen-year-old became pregnant by her mother’s boyfriend. The daughter went to her mother and asked her mother if she would help her get an abortion. Her mother said, “No. Haven’t you read your Bible?” The girl carried the baby to term. It was a difficult pregnancy. The baby was born with a number of health problems. The fifteen- year- old mother had a mental breakdown not long after the baby was born and had to be put in the public mental hospital, leaving the baby to be raised by his aunt and grandmother, both of whom were mortified the baby existed at all. Due to his congenital defects, the baby died when he was 5 months old. The mother of the baby was brought out of the hospital to attend the funeral, and taken back. Time passed, and the thirteen- year old, now fourteen went to her mother, asked the same question and was given the same answer her older sister was given. It is at this point that my Christian minister friend has a hard time telling this story because he was the one to whom the call came when the second daughter took the shotgun off the wall and took her own life, while her mother was out weeding the garden.

Among the reasons the Religious Right is not always right is that life is not always a matter of easy choices. In a broken world, we throw ourselves on the mercy seat of God and do the best we can with the options that are available.

These are the most challenging days that I can remember in my life as a Christian and as a citizen of the USA. The option of choice for women and girls has not been more threatened in 30 years. Around the world, the rise of fundamentalism, zealousness, and violence in the name of God continues unabated. What can we do? Exactly what Margaret Mead said that we could do—keep trying to change the world!

How? By believing passionately and acting wisely, that’s how. By starting a revolution in the voting booths of Georgia, that’s how. By loving justice and acting in kindness and by being humble, not in the sense of being shrinking violets but in the sense of being confident that behind and beyond all that we do there is a divine power at work. Some name that power Allah, others Yahweh, still others the triune God made known in Jesus Christ. Whatever the name, the reality is the invincible force of love, the eternal will to justice, the unshakable promise of a world in which peace shall reign, and there will be no more suffering or tears or pain, for the former things will have passed away.

I close with a wonderful story one of my favorite Episcopalians tells in his new book. Bennett J. Sims, Bishop Emeritus of the Diocese of Atlanta, has just written a book entitled, Why Bush Has To Go. When Nathan Pusey became President of Harvard, his wife Ann was invited to be guest of honor at a society tea on Beacon Hill. She was quite taken with the beauty and variety of hats the guests wore to the tea and was moved to ask her hostess, ”Where do your friends get their stunning hats?” “Oh, my dear, in Boston, we don’t get hats. We have them!” her hostess replied.

Friends, if Bishop Sims were here tonight he would want you to know that we do not need to get power in our state.

We have the power to start a revolution in the voting booths of Georgia.

We have the power to restore the balance to American society.

We have the power to change the world.

Let us begin now!