WALKING TOGETHER

By C. Welton Gaddy

Executive Director of The Interfaith Alliance

Past President, the Alliance of Baptists

Alliance of Baptists Northeast Convocation

First Baptist Church, Worcester, MA

Sept. 18, 2004

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I want to speak personally with you this morning about a visiona vision much larger, much more inclusive than the Alliance of Baptists, but a vision that is a source of identity, a motivation for ministry, and an inspiration for integrity in the Alliance of Baptists.  Ideas will be involved in what I say, to be surebiblical and civil ideas with which to wrestle and to work.  I fully intend to commend to you an agenda for action as well.  But, all of thatthe ideas, and the action suggestions will emerge, if at all, in the course of personal reflections on this vision.

The vision is as old as the Hebrew Scriptures as Christian as the New Testament Scriptures and as American as the Mayflower Compact.  The vision is that of walking together.

Walking together!  Massage that phrase with your minds and meander its meaning through your souls allowing its truth to linger, stick, nurture, inform, and inspire youwalking together.  Within those two words joined together reside the substance of a vision and an agenda for action for the people known as the Alliance of Baptists.

The Substance of the Vision

The vision of walking together informs our understanding of spirituality, insisting that the life of faith is a shared journey.  Everybody among the faithful is moving, reaching out, stretching, and pursuing growth, but nobody has arrived.  That is why we are walking. Though the journey has a goal, to be sure, in the most basic sense, the journey is itself a goal.

Horrendous problems occur when one group of people imagines that it has arrived while all others are still on the way.  When individuals start placing periods or exclamation points where commas or ellipses belong, trouble develops theologically and socially as well as grammatically.

My friend Will Campbells novella called Cecelias Sin highlights the danger of attempts to write the end of a story that cannot be completed.  The central character in Wills work has written a history of that fiercely independent group from the radical wing of the Reformation called Anabaptists.  As Cecelia reflects on her narrative, she comments that the story really has no end; that her conclusion represents not the ending but a new beginning.  She recognizes that when you declare a story ended, you then have to defend it even with violence if necessary, to preserve your conclusions.

Alive and sick in contemporary American religion are people who have presumed to construct the end, to write the final conclusion, of a spirituality so dynamic in nature that it defies any form of captivity.  Rather than continuing to ask questions, think new thoughts, pursue unvisited avenues of truth, and thus grow, these folks spend all their time defending their dogmatic conclusions and imposing their static beliefs on others, even attempting to use the power of government to do so when possible.

Friends, the journey is not over.  In most ways, we have just begun to mine its riches.  As Robert Frost said so eloquently, We have miles to go before we sleep.

The vision of walking together also informs our understanding of community reminding us that walking is a spiritually authentic mode of travel.  I love the prophet Isaiahs images of the life of faith.  Remember that wonderful text:  They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.  What encouragement!  Empowered by the spirit of God, people mount up with wings like eagles and soar or run like a young sprinter who does not grow weary.  Honestly, though, the last image in Isaiahs vision is the one that gives me hopeempowered by the spirit of God, some people walk and dont faint.

Being a part of a community in which people walk together makes us aware that a life of faith is not synonymous with constant happiness, incessant smiling, high-pitched excitement, the power of positive thinking, running like a youthful sprinter, and soaring like a mighty eagle.  As we walk together, we see who others are and we know who we are. 

Look at those of us gathered here this weekend. We attend these meetings carrying within us concerns over an elderly parent who is dying, a child who is battling major difficulties, a marriage that is unraveling, a job that is boring, a friend acting as a traitor, a dream that is fading.  Heaven knows we cant soar.  Some of us carry heavy burdens that caused us not even to want to get out of bed this morning.  We cannot run and not be weary; we came here already too weary to run.  But we can walk with the promise of not fainting.  And, thats enough; more than enough actually.  As we lift our feet and get one step before another, we realize that we are not alone.  Walking is o.k.  We are walking with others; indeed, we are walking together.

The vision of walking together also informs our understanding of the nature of our ministry.  We offer encouragement to others simply by walking.  By no means a perfect people who have arrived, we travel together as people who have been disappointed, who have doubted, hurt, and failed, yet stayed together.  Henri Nouwens portrait of the wounded healer painted with hues drawn from the Servant Songs of Isaiah and the words and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth is a profoundly important picture.  Sometimes I think it is a profile of our fellowship.  Those of us who are walking together are the walking woundedthe wounded who are still walking, not people defeated by our wounds but people empowered by our wounds, enabled to assist others.  Scars from our wounds become the source of our healing.

Walking together!  Well, for now, that is enough about walkingthe vision of walking informs our spirituality, our understanding of community, and the nature of our ministry.  Lets talk about together. Togetherness, too, is part of the vision.

We are a deeply divided nation.  Our nation is divided economically, socially, educationally, and politically.  Unfortunately, some among us find it to their benefit economically and politically to capitalize on the divisions in a manner that makes them worse.  Usually in the midst of such division, we would turn to the religious community for help in the work of healing and reconciliation; indeed, for a model of how to live in unity with our deepest differences.  But, today, the religious community itself is deeply divided; deeply divided along virtually the same fault lines as the rest of society.  On the religious landscape of America you can see not only divisions between historic religions and major denominations, but, in many instances, even deeper divisions within religious traditions and denominations.  Baptists, I am sad to say, are not an exception to this observation. Though unwaveringly committed to and in the center of the historic Baptist tradition, The Alliance of Baptists is likely much closer to the United Church of Christ and many other Christian denominations than to other fellowships that claim the name Baptist.

During the administration of President Bill Clinton, the White House convened a meeting of the nations leading scientists asking them to take a look at the possibility of life on the planet Mars.  Carl Sagaan insisted that the religious community be represented in that gathering.  Subsequently, Joan Brown Campbell and Bill Moyers were attendees.  Reminiscing about that gathering, Joan shared an important observation made by one of the other participants.  A scientist said without equivocation that in the biosphere independence means death.  In other words, for life to be a reality, interdependence is a necessity.  As another scientist put it, The future either will be ecumenical or there will be no future.

I agree, though I likely would use the word interfaith or inter-religious.  But that raises important questions.  Does fellowship with other people compromise the integrity of our faith?  Is different a moral category?  Distortions in my personal faith tradition said, Yes.  The week before I left home to embark upon studies in a seminary, a good friend warned me that those liberal theologians could ruin me.  From the inside, I watched a denomination refuse to participate in any meeting convened by any other religious fellowship as a matter of paranoid faithnot wanting to associate with people who are wrong and could be contaminating.  Now, as I travel this country, I see that same sad dynamic of isolationist arrogance in many denominations.

One of the great joys I have experienced as a member of the Alliance of Baptists is to watch our fellowship interact with and ultimately identify with people from many other religious traditions.  I still remember the thrill of being present as we formalized our membership in and relationship with the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States. As president of the Interfaith Alliance, I have the great privilege of working daily with people from over 75 different religious traditions and learning the richness of faith traditions other than those associated with western Christianity and knowing that the Alliance of Baptists supports this work financially, emotionally, and programmatically. 

I see the Alliance of Baptists as a fellowship that can model for our nation the possibility of people who are very different from each other walking together in cooperation and compassion.   The need for such a model simply cannot be overstated.  Friends, it is not that we have to get along because of the closeness of our geographical proximity but because of the depth of our religious integrity, not because of the smallness of the global village in which we live, but because of the largeness of the faith that lives within us.

Together!  Walking together is the substance of a vision, a vision that expands our definition of we.  Moreover, the vision of walking together includes

An Agenda for Action

Walking together involves action as well as vision.  The vision embraces doing as well as being.  Behavioral as well as ideological elements are integral to walking together.

Walking together requires moving beyond tolerance to practicing acceptance.  Toleration is a good initial step but never an adequate terminal step into real fellowship and true community.  In fact, toleration is really a form of paternalism.  How audacious it is for anyone to think that he or she can give other people permission to be who they are!  

Walking together involves far more than tolerating each other.  Walking together requires engaging each other, risking the possibility of being influenced, even changed, by each other.  So, the Alliance of Baptists puts its arms around conservatives and liberals, Greens, Democrats and Republicans, gays, lesbians, bi-sexual and trans-gendered persons as well as persons who are heterosexual, members of small churches and members of large churches, not in order to co-exist with each other but in order to engage each other, learn from one another, and walk together.

The agenda of walking together moves us beyond toleration to efforts at cooperation; attempts to know, understand, and appreciate each other.

Prominent as well in the agenda born of the vision of walking together is a recommitment to the priority of freedom, especially religious freedom.  Surely we know by now that we cannot take freedom for granted. 

In the present political climate, defending freedom has become an enterprise filled with the risk of confusion and misunderstanding.  Many of the most dangerous threats to freedom right now use the rhetoric of liberty and operate under a banner of freedom.  In the next few days, before this session of Congress adjourns for the national elections, both the Senate and the House are likely to vote on the text of the Jones Bill that will be added as an amendment to a jobs bill.  This piece of legislation purporting to defend the freedom of speech in houses of worship actually will allow houses of worship to endorse candidates for public office and use a portion of offerings given to the house of worship for the support of partisan political campaigns.  The Speaker of the House has been urged to get a vote on this proposed legislation prior to November 2^nd. 

Last week, while reading a recently-published book on religious liberty by Forrest Church, a Unitarian Universalist minister friend of mine, I swelled with pride as I discovered Forrests praise for Baptists, whose vision and courage as advocates for religious liberty were singular within the early religious community in the colonies.  Now, that reputation must be regained.  That work must be done again to defend, protect, and preserve a liberty won long ago, which if compromised now, may never exist again.

In a national context in which the holy name of God is dubbed a patriotic term, in which politicians critique those who refuse to say that God has a deferential bias toward America, in which executive orders allow government funds to pour directly into the coffers of pervasively religious institutions, in which candidates explain that Jesus could not vote for their opponents, in which some churches turn holy rituals into partisan political tools, and in which a Supreme Court justice suggests that church-state issues might best be decided by majority votes in local communities, we face the very real prospect of returning to a pre-First Amendment situation.  We Baptists cannot allow that to happen.  But, some who bear the name of Baptist are no longer with us in this struggle.  They have decided that an established religion would not be such a bad idea if the established religion could be their religion.

How dare religious right leaders scold our nation for immorality simply because the electorate has refused to endorse those leaders narrow definition of morality!  You see, some people dont want to walk together with other people unless they determine the conditions for both being together and walking.  These folks have a right to hold a wrong view, but they dont have the right to propagate that view as the only viable posture for people of faith and they are wrong, politically and morally, when they demonize those who refuse to accept their limited concept of freedom as real freedom. 

The Alliance of Baptists has never wavered in its advocacy for a strict separation between the institutions of religion and government.  Now, we well may have to lead, we certainly will have to participate in, a new broad-based ecumenical and inter-religious coalition to preserve religious liberty.  And, we can and we should do that.

Walking together sensitizes us to the importance of everybody being able to walk togetherfree from tyranny and free for responsibility.

With the voicing of that observation comes the realization that an agenda born of the vision of walking together inevitably involves political action.   

The legal fate of more and more issues of conscience is being determined in political assemblies.  Our brother and sisters in Cuba deserve our political efforts aimed at removing a United States-sponsored embargo that stands like a memorial to moral insensitivity and irresponsibility in the international community.  Our concern for the increasing number of poor people in our nation and the decreasing number of people with health insurance requires political action.

As people of faith and vision, we cannot be absent from the political arena.  Legislators must not be left with the conclusion that a small group of people of faith represent the moral convictions, belief assertions, and political interests of all people of faith.

Claiming a corner on truth, religious right leaders attempt to discredit all who dont bow before their authority and support their political agendademonizing opponents and labeling counter movements as immoral and un-American.  Unfortunately, we sometimes allow such tactics to get to us and place us on the defensive. That should not happen.  We must reclaim the initiative.

As we work tirelessly in the political process, let there be no mistake about who we are and what we are about.  We are pro-Americanpatriotic citizens in the truest sense of that terminologypatriots like that friend described by William Butler Yeats, A patriotic man who gave the country not what it wanted, but what it neededa kind of perpetual last day, a sound of trumpets and summoning up to judgment.  We are pro-family, believing that every member of every family unit, whatever its nature, should be able to exercise a freedom of conscience as well as enjoy the rights and share in the benefits of government.  We are pro-morality, liberally calling for a conservative interpretation of the United States Constitution that works for liberty and justice apart from partisanly-defined restrictions on either.  We are pro-life in the old-fashioned waysupporters of a view of individual dignity that mandates the best quality of life possible for all people.  We are pro-religion responding to inspiration and instruction from sacred scriptures as we work for a civil society in which an appreciation for diversity leads to the realization of community and the unspeakable joy of walking together.

So much for togetherness!

In conclusion, I commend to you again the vision of walking together.  As I make that commendation, I see a search party successful in finding a lost child because of people holding hands while walking together.  I see women from different backgrounds with different interests moving together to secure for all women the voting rights that should have been theirs since the beginning of this nation.  I see a civil rights movement in which fear from the threats of bigots are tempered by the solidarity of a mutually-strengthening fellowship.  I see persons in communities all across this land marching toward light and freedompeople walking together.

The Alliance of Baptists is not a homogeneous fellowship; rather a fellowship in which people different from each other in many ways have learned to appreciate each otherindeed, even to love each othernot despite the differences but for the differences.  We know that we can do together what none of us can do alone.

As I suggested in the beginning, the vision of walking together is scriptural and spiritual as well as secular and democratic.  That is another part of its worth for us as we work in this nation.

I am told that not far from here, every Sunday for over 380 years, the First Church in Plymouth has repeated a version of the Mayflower Compact.  Please listen to the words of that covenant.

We pledge to walk together

In the ways of truth and affection,

As best we know them now

Or may learn them in days to come,

That we and our children may be filled

And that we may speak to the world

In words and actions

Of peace and goodwill.

My dear Alliance of Baptists friends and colleagues, here is truth worth observing, a covenant worth celebrating, and a biblically-inspired vision about walking together worth sharing with each other and with the world.  Amen.

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