Dr. Robin Meyers' Speech to students at
OK University
As some of you know, I am minister of Mayflower Congregational Church in
Oklahoma City, an Open and Affirming, Peace and Justice church in northwest
Oklahoma City, and professor of Rhetoric at Oklahoma City University. But you
would most likely have encountered me on the pages of the Oklahoma Gazette,
where I have been a columnist for six years, and hold the record for the most
number of angry letters to the editor.
Tonight, I join ranks of those
who are angry, because I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over
by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus, but whose actions are
anything but Christian.
We've heard a lot lately about so-called "moral
values" as having swung the election to President Bush. Well, I'm a great
believer in moral values, but we need to have a discussion, all over this
country, about exactly what constitutes a moral value -- I mean what are we
talking about? Because we don't get to
make them up as we go along,
especially not if we are people of faith. We have an inherited tradition of
what is right and wrong, and moral is as moral does.
Let me give you
just a few of the reasons why I take issue with those in power who claim moral
values are on their side:
1. When you start a war on false pretenses, and
then act as if your deceptions are justified because you are doing God's will,
and that your critics are either unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are
some of us who have given our lives to teaching and preaching the faith who
believe that this is not only not
moral, but immoral.
2. When you live in a country that has
established international rules for waging a just war, build the United
Nations on your own soil to enforce them, and then arrogantly break the very
rules you set down for the rest of the world, you are doing something
immoral.
3. When you claim that Jesus is the Lord
of your life, and yet fail to acknowledge that your policies ignore his
essential teaching, or turn them on their head (you know, Sermon on the Mount
stuff like that we must never return violence for violence and that those who
live by the sword will die by the sword), you are doing something
immoral.
4. When you act as if the lives of Iraqi
civilians are not as important as the lives of American soldiers, and refuse
to even count them, you are doing something immoral.
5. When you find a
way to avoid combat in Vietnam, and then question the patriotism of someone
who volunteered to fight, and came home a hero, you are doing something
immoral.
6. When you ignore the fundamental teachings
of the gospel, which says that the way the strong treat the weak is the
ultimate ethical test, by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us so the
strong will get stronger and the weak will get weaker, you are doing something
immoral.
7. When you wink at the torture of
prisoners, and deprive so-called "enemy combatants" of the rules of the Geneva
convention, which your own country helped to establish and insists that other
countries follow, you are doing something immoral.
8. When you claim that the world can be
divided up into the good guys and the evil doers, slice up your own nation
into those who are with you, or with the terrorists -- and then launch a war
which enriches your own friends and seizes control of the oil to which we are
addicted, instead of helping us to
kick the habit, you are doing something
immoral.
9. When you fail to veto a single spending
bill, but ask us to pay for a war with no exit strategy and no end in sight,
creating an enormous deficit that hangs like a great millstone around the
necks of our children, you are doing something immoral.
10. When you cause most of the rest of
the world to hate a country that was once the most loved country in the world,
and act like it doesn't matter what others think of us, only what God thinks
of you, you have done something immoral.
11. When you use hatred of homosexuals as a
wedge issue to turn out record numbers of evangelical voters, and use the
Constitution as a tool of discrimination, you are doing something
immoral.
12. When you favor the death penalty,
and yet claim to be a follower of Jesus, who said an eye for an eye was the
old way, not the way of the kingdom, you are doing something immoral.
13. When you dismantle countless
environmental laws designed to protect the earth which is God's gift to us
all, so that the corporations that bought you and paid for your favors will
make higher profits while our children breathe dirty air and live in a toxic
world, you have done something immoral. The earth
belongs to the Lord, not
Halliburton.
14. When you claim that our God is
bigger than their God, and that our killing is righteous, while theirs is
evil, we have begun to resemble the enemy we claim to be fighting, and that is
immoral. We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.
15. When you tell people that you intend
to run and govern as a "compassionate conservative," using the word which is
the essence of all religious faith-compassion, and then show no compassion for
anyone who disagrees with you, and no patience with those who cry to you for
help, you are doing something immoral.
16. When you talk about Jesus
constantly, who was a healer of the sick, but do nothing to make sure that
anyone who is sick can go to see a doctor, even if she doesn't have a penny in
her pocket, you are doing something immoral.
17. When you put
judges on the bench who are racist, and will set women back a hundred years,
and when you surround yourself with preachers who say gays ought to be killed,
you are doing something immoral.
I'm tired of people thinking that because I'm a Christian, I must be a
supporter of President Bush, or that because I favor civil rights and gay
rights I must not be a person of faith. I'm tired of people saying that I
can't support the troops but oppose the war.
I heard that when I was
your age--when the Vietnam war was raging. We knew that war was wrong, and you
know that this war is wrong--the only question is how many people are going to
die before these make-believe Christians are removed from power?
This
country is bankrupt. The war is morally bankrupt. The claim of this
administration to be Christian is bankrupt. And the only people who can turn
things around are people like you--young people who are just beginning to wake
up to what is happening to them. It's your country to take back. It's your
faith to take back.
It's your future to take back.
Don't be afraid to speak out. Don't
back down when your friends begin to tell you that the cause is righteous and
that the flag should be wrapped around the cross, while the rest of us keep
our mouths shut. Real Christians take chances for peace. So do real Jews, and
real Muslims, and real Hindus, and real
Buddhists--so do all the faith
traditions of the world at their heart believe one thing: life is
precious.
Every human being is precious. Arrogance is the opposite of
faith. Greed is the opposite of charity. And believing that one has never made
a mistake is the mark of a deluded man, not a man of faith.
And war -- war is the greatest failure of the human race -- and thus the
greatest failure of faith. There's an old rock and roll song, whose lyrics say
it all: War, what is it good for? Absolutely
nothing.
And what is the dream of the prophets? That we should
study war no more, that we should beat our swords into plowshares and our
spears into pruning hooks. Who would Jesus bomb, indeed? How many wars does it
take to know that too many people have died?
What if they gave a war and nobody
came? Maybe one day we will find
out.
