Freedom & Equality here in NJ

 Our after-church Adult Education program at Holmdel Community UCC this past month has been a PBS Frontline video: “God in America”, and it has been inspiring for me.  The series gives a sweeping overview of the religious transformations that have forged the vibrant faiths in our nation, and ways that religion has both divided and sustained us through terrible times.   A central theme that keeps being revealed is that our country’s faiths over-and-over-again express freedom of conscience and individual religious questing.  We saw with the ‘Great Awakening’ in colonial times and the brushfire of religious revivals on the frontier in the early 1800’s that allowed individuals the ability and the dignity to claim their own relationship to God and to be transformed by it.  When untold thousands of immigrants reached our shores, after the potato famine in Ireland in the early 1800’s or after violence in other nations, people found the ability to worship in their own ways.  Roman Catholics, Jews, and others formed their own schools, gained civil rights, and preserved their own ways of worship.  During the Civil War, our nation was torn apart by political and economic differences around slavery, fueled by differing interpretations of scripture.  The result was a whirlwind of unimaginable violence that we are still reeling from today.  With the conclusion of this conflict came the overthrowing slavery and an abiding commitment to human freedom and dignity through emancipation, not only of African Americans, but also for all.   This was affirmed, after great struggle, by the Civil Rights movement in our own time.  Like a great river, our nation’s people continue to move, slowly but surely, in the direction of the celebrating human freedom and liberty of conscience for ALL.

            Our own state is going through another civil rights decision this month, about whether to allow a minority to live with equality and dignity.  Will gay and lesbian folk in our state be given equal rights and respect by granting full access to legal marriage?   The NJ Superior Court voted unanimously that it is against our state constitution to have a dual standard and to deny benefits to same sex partners.  The arguments against this are very similar to ones used against abolishing slavery prior to the Civil War: “It says right here in the Bible that slavery is OK!”  “It says right here in the Bible…” can be used in many different ways.   But what would Jesus say about this?   Clearly, Jesus was a voice for compassion, for human dignity and love, even to those minorities that society routinely rejected.   The early church accepted many that formal religion shunned, including, I believe, gays.  (Read Acts 8:26-39)    (See, I can also say, “It says right here…!)  It is time for us to finally achieve another victory in our civil rights history, rejoicing in equality and freedom.

            Sadly, much of our nation continues to be polarized in similar ways to that prior to the Civil War.  We paint others with terrible colors of hatred and rejection. We see this being played out in Washington, DC.   Yet, spanning the great arc of history, we continue to progress, incrementally, toward a society, in which each of us, as different as we are, can hold our heads high and realize that we are equal and free.   “God is still speaking” even in our age.

            See you in church!                  Rev. Rusty