READING

Whenever there’s talk of a cultural war, the theme of the service today, we usually think of two sides at battle, the conservatives vs. the liberals, for example, in political terms, or the traditionals vs. the moderns, in more general terms. Today I will be talking about a third category, the Cultural Creative -- which you may or may not have heard of -- but which the authors of our reading this morning believe is a new group to consider in our culture and its clashes. Sociologist Paul Ray and psychologist Sherry Anderson’s book is called: The Cultural Creatives, How 50 million People Are Changing The World. The Cultural Creatives have emerged primarily since the 1960s in the United States (as well as in Europe) -- Ray and Anderson give the following description of the battle scene: "The Cultural Creatives did not materialize from some eternal cornfield in Iowa, near Kevin Costner’s field of dreams. On the contrary, they walked into a scene that was a lot more like Madison Square Garden on the night of a heavyweight brawl. Two powerful subcultures were already contending in the arena, the Moderns and the Traditionals. And the fight was, and is, a struggle to define America. … Viewed up close, this so-called fight of the century could appear to be just another political battle, or a series of individual wrangles over singles issues: abortion, school vouchers …, multiculturalism,
School prayer, child care, affirmative action and quotas, funding for the arts, gay rights, pornography, the status of women, the meaning of ‘pro-family’, and sex, drugs, and graft in the lives of various politicians. If we view the culture war from too close a perspective, we’ll be missing the big picture, because a culture war is not about individual issues and it’s not just about politics. The fight that the Cultural Creatives walked in on
is basically about who will define our social reality, and whose values will be the official values of our culture. It is a no-holds-barred match over who has the moral authority to decide how Americans live, both in public and in private. As sociologist James Davison Hunter points out in his book Culture Wars, the idea of cultural conflict may sound abstract, but nothing less than a way of life is at stake. And because that conflict is fundamentally a struggle for power, a lot of factors enter in, including, he says, ‘money (a great deal of it), reputation, livelihood, and a considerable array of other resources.’
When all is said and done, Hunter insists, the culture war is ‘ultimately about the struggle for domination."
So ends the reading.

PRAYER

Please join with me now in a spirit of prayer and meditation.
Creative Spirit, we are here this morning
To seek deeper understanding in our lives,
Deeper meanings for the mystery of life itself.
We seek that which will hold us together
And that which will give us the wisdom
To discern between our individual
And our collective needs and desires.
We walk in a weary world,
But we seek the energy and joy and peace
of inner and outer spiritual truths
To sustain us as we strive
To do what is right and good
For ourselves, our families, Our friends and our world.
May our hearts be humble
As we learn together,
Seeking the larger truths of meaning,
And of holiness.
May our hearts be grateful for the gift of life,
With all its curiosity, exploration and creativity.
May a spirit of joy and peace fill you, AMEN.

SERMON

The State of Our Cultural War
August 15, 2004
I chose this sermon topic -- Are we in a cultural war? -- in July -- I was pretty sure we were in a cultural war -- the election season had been particularly heated already -- the sides seemed so extremely well defined and drawn -- and there has been, and will be for so long, as only an example, so much societal strife over the issue of gay marriage.
But then the Democrats assured me at their convention that we were really a united America -- that our values are not different, but that there are common American values that bring us together. For a minute, maybe only a second, I was almost convinced. Then I went to the bookstore; I turned to the three tiers of books on Current Affairs -- I was jarred back into reality: There was Molly Ivin’s Bushwhacked, in which George W. Bush was first described as a shrub; Bush on the Couch, Sore Winners, right along side, The Many Faces of John Kerry, Why This Massachusetts Liberal Is Wrong for America -- with the cover sporting three very unflattering photographs of the man whom the comic strip Boondocks recently suggested looked like a sleeping Oak tree. There was -- Big Lies -- the Right Wing Propaganda And How it Distorts the Truth and Worse than Watergate along with (one of my favorite titles) The Official Handbook of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy -- The Arguments You Need To Defeat the Loony Left. Then, there was Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men, right along side Michael Moore is a Big Fat,
Stupid White Man, and How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office.
I felt reassured in my idea for a sermon: Are we in a cultural war? Yes. And is it getting worse? Yes. Are we more divided than ever as a nation and a people? Yes. Is it scary and strange and sickening? Yes. Do you sometimes worry about a critical mass of one or the other sides forming right in front of you? Yes. As one Prairie member told me a few weeks ago, he’d innocently gone to a book signing at a local store, not realizing that it was for one of those far right-wing writers. The crowd was hostile and scary to him,
ready to rip the heart out of any confessing liberal. Or as Linda Ronstadt found out
in Las Vegas -- not everyone agrees with Michael Moore.
Much of the talk has to do with how much our current president pulls no punches -- he’s a born-again Christian traditionalist. He’s fighting, however, a political battle in a country that has been defined and shaped by Modernism from its inception. But he seems to have trouble even negotiating the language of modernism. Interestingly, Ray and Anderson, in their book, which I read from in the reading this morning, lists his dad, George H.W. Bush, as a modern.
Ray and Anderson define the cultural war, sociologically, as between the Moderns and the Traditionalists -- it’s not a new war at all -- it is 500 years old. It dates back to the Renaissance when the "Traditionalists" were in power and the Moderns came on the scene. "Historically," they write, "the big values conflicts grew out of fights over religious doctrine. (the Protestant Reformation, for example) From about 1650 to 1950,
Our cultural quarrels were focused on religious hatreds and distrusts among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Ethnic feuds took second place, but they too were bitter and suspicious." They continue: "First it was the Anglo-Saxon stock against the Irish and the Germans, then those groups against the Poles and Italians; and those of European ancestry
were always against whoever was racially different: Asians, African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics. Still other struggles were organized around country versus city, racists versus the more tolerant, and South versus North, all going back to the 1800s.
Baneful animosities also were carried over from "the old country" to the United States
and took a long time to die out."
The good news, they say, is that most of these sides that were defined along racist and cultural lines have died out since the 1960s. Unfortunately, traditionalists of all stripes, now, have identified with one another more closely and are quite simply in pitched battle against the Moderns.
The good thing about the Moderns is that they can be credited with bringing us freedom of religion, separation of church and state, civil rights, feminism, voting rights,
multiculturalism and the idea of pluralism (all the foundational ideas, I might add,
Of the Unitarian Universalist church, always a modern church). We are swimming in our modern world, so much so, that it’s often hard to distinguish, but modern values and ways define everything from business to advertising to art. And most people in the broad middle are moderns, and they include business people, teachers, factory workers, those who are striving to make it, and those who feel they have failed and been left behind.
The bad thing, is that Modernism -- along with its innovations in technology, communications, industry and science -- also has brought us consumerism; materialism; the me decade; the me-first mentality; bigger is better; success is measured by wealth and achievement and, sometimes, at any cost; along with cynicism toward this world
and its institutions.
Like it or not, I believe, the traditionalists have cause to rebel.
Ray and Anderson suggest that this conflict has helped create a significant third subset, as I’ve indicated, the so-called cultural creative, whom they estimate at 50 million people in the United States. Cultural Creatives are holistic -- they like to learn from many sources and to synthesize information from different concepts. They are interested in keeping the best of the past and mending differences. They are deeply interested in the environment and the state of our air, water and planet and future. They are in favor of women’s rights (where they strongly agree with the Moderns); but they are tired of the cultural war and the fight. They are weary of the lack of deeper values in modernism.
Most have gone through some kind of internal change against the values they grew up with, and, by and large, they are interested in an authentic spirituality and they are spiritual seekers.
Looking at Ray’s and Anderson’s list of who have been Traditionals,
Moderns and Cultural Creatives in our time, I was torn. I truly admired someone from every category, probably meaning, without doubt, that I am a cultural creative.
Traditionals include, they think, Jimmy Carter, who was so admirable, I thought,
As he came back this year, after some years of banishment from the Democrats,
to talk about the Middle East during the recent convention; Mother Teresa, perhaps the most influential woman of the last century; J.R.R. Tolkien, whose Lord of the Rings trilogy is a huge moral epic based upon Christian values; M. Scott Peck; Louis Armstrong; Lucille Ball; John Wayne; Norman Rockwell; Carl Sandburg; C.S. Lewis and John Ford …. Someone, I’m thinking, must preserve the traditional values of our culture.
But the Moderns are just as appealing, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mary McCarthy, e.e. cummmings, Isaac Asimov, Ernest Hemingway, B.F.Skinner, Pablo Picasso, Dave Brubeck, Woody Allen, Harrison Ford, Alfred Hitchcock.
And then there are those they identify as on the Cultural Creatives’ side of a new reality…. And I admit, that my soul sang a little bit deeper song: Vaclav Havel, Pope John XXIII, Martin Luther King Jr., The Dalai Lama, Isable Allende, Adrienne Rich,
Annie Dillard, Doris Lessing, Georgia O’Keefe, Marc Chagall, Yo-Yo Ma, Enya, Robert Redford, Katharine Hepburn, George Lucas and Bill Moyers.
I give this partial list, hoping that it helps you, like it did me, to understand what they are talking about. The Traditionals -- those who hold to the old, traditional values,
At least in name -- family, religion and clan, patriotism and selfless giving. The Moderns, those who forge ahead to new vistas, who embody the now, who set the pace,
name and discard the trends, who move on and change things forever, letting go of yesterday, who believe in progress and that anything is possible.
And the Cultural Creatives, those who stop, pause and look deeper, always questioning, wondering why, who are worried about the underlying pollution of our world, who are not satisfied with false, glib or shallow answers, always seeking real and authentic meaning and value and real, sustainable results.
Molly Ivins, who grew up in East Texas, is called a cultural creative ……
I can’t help but identify with Ivins. I also grew up in Texas, though on the other side,
West Texas, I was a journalist, too; I wrote about politics, and our paths crossed a few times. Molly Ivins knew when she was five that her parents and all of society was lying.
She was told that she had to drink from the "white" water fountain because the "colored" water fountain was dirty. "But as any clear-eyed five-year-old could see," Molly says in Ray and Anderson‘s book, "in the white part of town, the white fountain was always covered with chewing gum and the marks of grubby kids’ paws, and the colored fountain was always clean. No Contest. Children can be horribly logical … And once you figure out they are lying to you about race, you start to question everything."
The separate water fountains were gone by the time I was a kid, but people still lived where they were supposed to …. if you were black or Hispanic you literally lived
on the other side of the tracks in Midland, Texas, the same place George W. Bush worked as a young oil, businessman and sometimes calls his hometown.
My seventh grade Texas history teacher, who must have been an early cultural creative, taught me more than I ever learned at any other time in all my time in school
in what was then the racist, classist, segregated town of Midland. Mr. Torres taught,
and I still wonder how he kept his job, except that it probably went a bit over the heads
of most of us 13 year olds, including me, until only later and in retrospect, that the Texans may be remembered as history’s heroes at the Alamo, but, in the end, they were the white, brutal colonists who took the land away from the Mexicans -- Hispanics, who also arrived from Europe just as early as the white settlers of America. And Mr. Torres taught that they all took the land away from the Native Americans -- who fought, but in the end,
could do more than watch as the various European tribes battled for dominance of what was once their land. I still remember his excruciatingly detailed maps of where all the American Indians, especially those who had lived in Texas, lived in what is now the United States -- where exactly they had lived before, for centuries.
These are the reality stories that challenge the Modernist view of history --
that all’s good that ends in profit and success. They also, though, challenge the Traditionalist view of history. Things were not better before. Things were awful and rotten and brutal, racist and classist and sexist.
So, where do we go from here?
The good news, to me, is that there is a third narrative entering this dualistic battle between the moderns and the traditionals: The moderns, the move-ons, get real, get with it, me first, win, win, win group and the traditionals, the people who want to tell all of us
what we can do, when we can do it and with whom we can do it -- whatever you want to call it, wherever you are in the spectrum -- or if you are all over the place, which is fine --
there’s another alternative, and perhaps several others, saying that we can stop, take a breath, and do not need to engage in heavy combat, or take a position between the two sides to find a bigger and deeper truth. You do not have to agree with me, and that’s why we have Reflection from the congregation in this church, but I believe the whole 500-year-long cultural debate between the moderns and the traditionals is now out of touch with what matters, the state of our environment, the failure of our religions and churches to make sense, the failure of our powerful society to take more seriously world-wide problems and issues.
They have missed the boat fighting tooth and nail on individual political issues --
not that they don’t matter! Abortion, gay rights, women’s rights, free press and free speech -- all of them certainly matter to me -- but they have missed the boat in what is important over the long haul. What’s important is our earth, our environment, the legacy we leave to our children -- Do we have clean air, beautiful rivers, sound oceans, oxygen-producing, green and mighty forests? What’s important is how well did we love and care for one another? Did we notice the starving, ill children in our world? Did we care for the poor in our midst? Did we offer to help those who needed help? Did we care for the sick? Were we too cynical to notice how hard life truly is for so many, many people?
Were we willing to be part of a solution, instead of simply settling for being right, superior, in an argument?
Six years ago, when I went to a training workshop in Boston for this then-new Prairie congregation, they had done a demographic study of the people of far southeast Aurora And Parker (where we meet) -- there were a lot of "cultural creatives" in our midst, according to the study, despite a reputation of this part of the metro area being a bastion of conservatives. All I understood from this then was that Cultural Creatives loved environmental issues and new, upbeat music.
What I believe now, as a Unitarian Universalist, is that our movement, always soundly grounded with the Modern perspective, needs to re-assess its values. None of the things we care about must go --- the role of women, the care of children, civil rights for all people, anti-racism, multiculturalism, the free and independent search for truth and knowledge. But what we must understand is that our seventh principle -- that we are all part of an interconnected web of existence -- is a lot more than just a platitude or an appeasement to the pagans, Native Americans and New Agers in our midst (which is how it felt like to me when it was added in the 1990s). Understanding our interdependence
and interconnectedness within the web of life is an imperative. The third strata of our culture, if it truly exists, which I think it does, is looking for guidance and meaning and language for how to describe this large, large view of humanity, our universe and spirituality.
When we step out one step beyond the cultural war, which is tearing our country apart, we can step into a bigger place that tells us that we are all part of one universe,
that everyone, including those with whom we may vehemently disagree, has something to offer and something to say, that every particle of thought, opinion and position, fits into a larger whole and effects that whole. That while it may seem that things are at loggerheads, it is possible to move beyond disagreements to start forging compromises,
completely different solutions and completely different values. Cultural Creatives, by the way, according to Ray and Anderson, are usually remarkably optimistic, refusing to give in to cynicism.
My challenge to you today is to look very, very closely at what you feel so strongly about which puts you at odds, sets you on one side or the other of this cultural war. Step back. Be very still. Think about how everyone is effected. Re-configure your thought, restate your argument, re-introduce respect and dignity to your supposed opponent. Re-define what you want to accomplish. Does it fit within the larger web of all life and all existence? Will it add to the peace and joy and comfort and happiness and acceptance to all within the web? If it is good, keep it. If it is not well formed, think longer. If it is ill-conceived, discard it. Do not hold one single thought, one single opinion, in your mind which you have not put to this test.
You must know why you believe as you do, why it would be truly better for all,
what are the plusses and the minuses, what is lost for the other side, and you must be deeply true to yourself. When you are true, then your sound, your plucking on the web, the harp of all existence, rings sweet and sure -- you touch all of us in the web of which we all are apart, and you add immeasurably to the common good. AMEN