Reason vs. Religion

Reason vs. Religion    July 27, 2025   Dr. Roger Ray

Click here to see the video

I have lately been re-reading the works of Thomas Paine, one of America’s founding fathers even though he was not invited to sign either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. Paine was a marginally educated laborer who had tried his hand at business but had failed a couple of times. But he was something of a political agitator and as such he came to the attention of Benjamin Franklin who sponsored him to come to the American colonies to work for his newspaper. He published his revolutionary views as a kind of magazine that was so broadly read that he has been called The Father of the Revolution, but he was never a part of the inner circle of the Revolution because he was a man of rather humble station in life. 

 

I wouldn’t call him a philosopher, as some people do, because, well, that is a bit of a lofty title for someone who was, in no way, a disciplined scholar. If he were around in our time, we might call him an influencer, but in his day, he was a revolutionary thinker who was not afraid to speak his mind. What has attracted me to him again was his very rational dismissal of traditional Christianity which he regarded to be mostly based on silly ancient stories that were obviously not true. 

 

Now, I consider myself to be a fairly clever person but I will confess to you that I went to grad school in 1979 pretty much believing in most of those silly stories. I might have been cynical about Eve’s conversation with a talking snake, or Balam’s conversation with his donkey, and I was pretty sure that the bits about Jesus turning water into wine and walking on the water were, at best, editorial flourishes but, the hard stuff about souls, heaven and hell, the empty tomb and the bodily resurrection of Jesus . . . I took that stuff to grad school with me and only let it go after a great deal of reading and study . . . and even still, I didn’t want to let it go. 

 

Somehow Thomas Paine managed to not only question the economic system that kept him and most of his ilk in poverty, along with the whole business about monarchy, but also the power and influence of the church, which was somehow integrated into an oppressive government, and a cruel economic system. His agitation against the monarchy and the church nearly got him arrested in Great Britain. He fled to France where, since he didn’t speak French, he was less likely to get into trouble, but he spoke English a little too well and too publicly and so he was arrested in jailed for his criticisms of Christianity. 

 

Thankfully, his political connections in the colonies were good enough to secure his release. While he was in France, both before and during his incarceration, he was working on his essay, “The Age of Reason,” which, though full of mistakes about a number of things, is a nearly miraculous piece of thinking produced by someone who did not have the advantages of some of the aristocracy that he was bold enough to criticize. By the time Paine died, only six people attended his funeral because he had been so critical of both the church and such revolutionary heroes as George Washington. 

 

I say that he made a number of glaring mistakes in his work because he worked almost entirely from memory. He didn’t have access to the internet, for sure, but in France, he didn’t even have access to a Bible or any English science books so, I believe, he can be forgiven for the more sloppy bits of his writing.

 

What draws me to him now is a certain frustration with our own age in which people seem to be so very willing to believe so many things that are clearly not true. The MAGA world is especially frustrating, a huge portion of our country that was willing to elect a felon and a known pedophile to the presidency because they thought that eggs were too expensive, but then they passively accept that the man who promised to lower prices immediately started a trade war with tariffs which are nothing but a sales tax levied on consumers, resulting in the single largest tax increase on the middle class in American history. 

 

For purely partisan reasons, MAGA folks ignore Trump’s total incompetence, his rape of the environment and alienation of allies and his love for cruel dictators, when simple and basic logic should make them repudiate him as much or more than we liberals do. It is all mysterious to me. MAGA doesn’t bat an eye when the guy who promised to deport violent criminals, rapists, and drug dealers actually goes after the guys picking our produce and loading construction trucks at Home Depot. They believed that he cared about poor Americans and would help them but instead he kicked millions off of Medicaid to give billionaires tax cuts that they didn’t need and, in most cases, didn’t even ask for and they cheer this on mindlessly . . . . 

but they get upset about the fact that his administration is not releasing the plane manifests and other details of Jeffery Epstein’s pedophile island. Did they think that he was going to release information that would incriminate Trump himself? He won’t even release his income tax returns and MAGA podcasters are upset that he won’t release evidence of his own pedophilia? Trump would fake his own suicide before he would do that!

 

But my interest in Thomas Paine goes far beyond MAGA hypocrisy. I’m more interested in how traditional religions, rife with superstition and magical thinking, have managed to make a resurgence in mainstream America. Paine makes the simple observation that the only evidence for heaven and hell, souls, and a supernatural theistic god are things written down in the holy books of Christians, Jews, and Muslims, all of which are purported to be believable because the writing was said to have been the product of people who were especially inspired by God. No evidence. No proof that these authors were anything more than either delusional or frauds. Paine sums it up saying, “for my own part, I disbelieve them all.” 

 

What was obvious to a virtually uneducated guy who made barrel staves for a living 250 years ago, continues to elude many very educated people in our age who simply never think about the silly things they claim to believe most dearly. How can that be? Paine continues, “All … churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave (human)kind, and monopolize power and profit. 

And the best part, especially for we Unitarians, Paine says, “I believe that religious duties consist in ding justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.” 

 

That is not as eloquent as Voltaire nor as disarming as Bertrand Russell but, plain enough to make a thinking person from a Mormon family to stop wearing magic underwear and make Muslim’s accept that not only did Muhammed not ride a winged horse to heaven but that winged horses don’t exist, and Christians should embrace their gay family members and take some tips from them about fashion, home decoration, and hair styles. 

Kierkegaard mused, “There are two ways to be fooled: One is to believe what isn’t true, the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” Trump wants to believe that if he puts a 100% tariff on good from China that somehow China will have to pay that tariff. But, obviously, no nation can levy a tax on another nation. The tariff is just a tax paid by the consumer, so that a $50 pair of sneakers now costs $100. China may not sell as many sneakers at that price but the ones they do sell, that extra $50 is paid by the American consumer who buys the sneakers. That’s how tariffs work, whether you want to believe it or not. Facts are stubborn things . . . they don’t change because you do not like the facts or you want what some gaslighting politicians might tell you is an “alternative fact.” An alternative fact is sort of like clean coal, neither exist and both are lies told to be who are gullible enough to believe it.

 

In a recent interview, Ted Cruz was talking about the prospect of an immanent bombing raid on Iranian nuclear facilities. He said that he favored the action because he had learned in Sunday School that those who bless Israel will be blessed by God. Even his right wing interviewer took him to task on this one. Obviously, the Harvard and Princton educated Cruz doesn’t believe that God will bless America for dropping the world’s biggest bombs on Iran; he just assumes that a lot of his Texas voters are dumb enough to believe that he believes it. 

 

That the Jews wrote a book 2500 years ago that says that doing favors for Israel will bring you good luck is not a big surprise, but who in the 21^st century should really fall for that obvious ploy?

 

It is too easy, though, to wave off either MAGA voters or Catholics as being simply gullible or stupid. Countless millions of people are capable of being physicians, scientists, CPAs, and architects during their working hours and then spend their evenings and weekends diving deeply into totally absurd political and religious beliefs that cannot stand a moment of critical analysis.

I offer Sir Issac Newton as a prime example. During the Great Plague of London in 1665, Cambridge closed. So, Newton went home and lived in isolation for a year. During that year he invented calculus, he came up with the unified laws of gravitation, and he did amazing experiments in optics and light. We have Newtonian physics because Newton had to drop out of college for a year and think for himself.

But what is rarely discussed is that Newton also devoted a huge amount of time to studying Biblical numerology, assigning numeric values to the letters of the Hebrew and Greek alphabet in order to decipher what he believed to be hidden secret messages in the book of Daniel and the Revelation to St. John. Through his tedious studies he came to the conclusion that the Catholic pope was the anti-Christ and that the world would come to an end in 2060. 

 

I cannot imagine how his mind could have been captured by such drivel, but I suppose we’ll have to wait another 35 years to find out which one of us right. I don’t know about you, but I strongly suspect that my world will come to an end before 2060! But if I should make it to the age of 104, I will plan to spend a few minutes feeling embarrassed for Sir Issac Newton’s less productive period of academic inquiry. 

 

I suppose that it is safe enough to predict that the world will end some 400 years later since no one in your immediate audience will be able to fact check you, but what might Newton have given to the world if he had used his time more wisely? 

Rene Descartes gave us the famous saying, “Cogito Ergo Sum,” “I think, therefore, I am.” One of my favorite internet memes shows a bug-eyed Descartes with the caption: When Descartes discovered that people who do not think also exist!

I shudder to even try to consider what percentage of the world’s population are blinded by either religious or political deceptions or, in many cases, both but it is the job of the woke to keep trying to poke the world trapped in deception to wake up and see the light of reason. 

 

Thomas Paine certainly wasn’t the smartest man ever to set pen to paper but just imagine what our world would be like if we could just accept his simple formula that the purpose of either politics or religion is to do justice, love mercy, and strive to make others more happy.

Religion and Politics – (Just Be Nice)

Religion and Politics – (Just Be Nice)    July 6, 2025   Dr. Roger Ray

click here to see the video

 

Back in the good ol days when even state universities had a budget for inviting famous speakers to campus to expose their young audience to influential thinkers, Western Kentucky University hosted William Buckley, the famous conservative host of Firing Line, and the originator of the National Review, to speak to a packed house of teenagers from rural Kentucky. 

 

I was an 18 year old freshman in 1974 and though I had never watched Firing Line nor picked up a copy of the National Review, I was in the audience. He didn’t talk about his recent trip to China with President Nixon when these two global super powers were just starting to talk to one another. He didn’t rail against liberals, gay people, or hippies so much as he just compassionately gave a lot of young people some advice about how to live a meaningful life. 

 

I remember two things he said that evening. One was that he had no respect for anyone who slept more than five hours a night but the other thing I remember was more useful. He said, “You have been warned not to talk about either politics or religion in a polite society. The problem with following that advice is that you will never learn how to have a civil conversation about things that are as important as religion and politics.” 

 

Those were the days when Republican and Democratic members of the congress could publicly debate about the civil rights movement, voters rights, desegregation, the Equal Rights Amendment, and abortion, and at the end of the day they would collect their spouses and children, and everyone would get together for an ice cream social. 

In the 80’s, Democratic House Speaker, Tip O’Neil, and conservative icon, President Ronald Regan, had a pact that they were “friends after 6 p.m.” 

 

A correspondent once brought this up to President Obama a decade ago, suggesting that maybe he should get a drink with Mitch McConnel, to which, Obama replied, “Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnel?”

I get it. I wouldn’t want to spend Happy Hour with Mitch McConnel, or Donald Trump, or, if it were even possible, Ronald Regan, but I know that somehow we have to get back to a place where we can sit down at a Thanksgiving dinner and have a polite and meaningful conversation about politics and religion, at a table where people don’t agree but where they can come to understand one another better. 

 

This week, if you pay much attention to the news, we have heard our president say boldly to loud applause that he hates Democrats. “Hates” them! For many years Americans have elected their presidents with just a 51% majority but previously, presidents would assure the public that they would be the president of those who voted for them and those who voted against him. But we have reached a new extreme of partisan division . . . and extreme in which a president can not only say that he hates the majority of Americans but in saying that, receive thunderous applause from his base. This is sad, obviously, but it may also be unsurvivable. 

 

Once public discourse becomes laden with angry accusations, hyperbole, name calling, and dismissive characterizations, people tend to become more devoted to their prejudices and rather than being shamed or bullied into changing, they tend to deepen their devotion to increasingly radical viewpoints. 

 

We Unitarians are fond of declaring that “love is my religion,” which would be wonderful if it were true, but I am afraid that all too often the larger truth is that “acquiescence is our religion.” 

 

We don’t talk about religion and politics with people who disagree with us, we just avoid potentially controversial conversations to avoid conflict. And I get that. There are times to just walk away to avoid starting an argument for which there is no meaningful end but, seriously, peace without some mutual understanding isn’t really peace, is it? It is more like surrender, or maybe indifference. Let me suggest a thought exercise.

It is a broadly known fact that 32 of the 33 western style democracies in the world have universal healthcare. The United States is the only country in that club that does not and yet, we spend more per capita on healthcare than any other nation of the world and our outcomes do not match the financial commitment we make to it. In fact, by most measurements, we come out near the bottom.

 

So, let’s imagine ourselves at a big family Thanksgiving dinner and the subject of universal healthcare comes up. I am going to insist that sick people need access to healthcare, whether it is free, or affordable, the point is, that everyone needs access to healthcare but how do we achieve that goal that has eluded us for a hundred years while most of the rest of the world has wrestled that pig to the ground?

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, have staked out the position that we should remove the age restrictions and offer Medicare to everyone. Predictably, someone at the Thanksgiving table would quickly say that both Bernie and AOC are crazy, or communists, or radicals. Can you imagine yourself saying, “Ok, let’s assume that you are right about them. How would you suggest that we get to universal or almost universal healthcare?” 

And then just stop talking. Now, some people are ok with our current situation in which one in ten Americans have no health insurance…. More than 30 million people, and that’s without the “Billionaire Bailout” bill recently passed by Congress. I’m not sure we have anything to talk about with someone who is willing to throw 30 million people under the bus just because they like the healthcare insurance they have for themselves . . . but let’s give conservatives a chance . . . what is their plan to improve access and outcomes while keeping costs down to something like what other western democracies spend? If Bernie and AOC are crazy, what is a sane plan to accomplish this obvious civilized goal?

 

Now, here is the problem, most conservatives won’t have an answer ready because they are not used to us listening to them. We are used to condescending, name calling, and walking away in a huff, but given the opportunity to show us that they understand the problem, that they agree with the goal, let’s talk about how to get there.

 

But let me show you an issue about communication. Just as an exercise, I’m going to say a sentence and ask you, in unison, to repeat the sentence back to me, ok:

Du bist mein Engel, ich bin Wachs in deinen Händen

It is a simple sentence but because I said it in German, unless you speak German, the words did not leave any muddy footprints on the clean waxed floor of your brain. But let’s try it again, in English, just repeat in unison after me:

You are my angel. I am wax in your hands.

 

See, even though you didn’t’ know the sentence beforehand, you know the words. It isn’t hard to do in a familiar language. Now, I don’t speak German, I just had reason to memorize that sentence. You may want to know more about that but that is not germane to the subject at hand. 

 

If your mind is fed for hours a day on either Fox News or MSNBC, you may not have the ability to understand the language of the person on the other side of the fence.

I’m suggesting that at least a part of the solution to the partisan divide that is tearing our country apart, is polite conversation about important topics. But we have to try to find some common language, some common ground, where we can discuss these things, especially to discuss important issues with someone with whom we dramatically disagree.

 

I think that a huge problem about discussing religion and politics in polite society is that we are not very clear about what we mean by either of those words. I have been accused many times over the past 40 years, of preaching too much about politics but I have never been accused of bringing politics into the pulpit by a person who agreed with what I was saying.

 

If I say, as a person of faith, that empathy, compassion, are core aspects of religion and therefore, I believe in universal healthcare . . . then the only people who would say that I am talking about politics would be the people who don’t want universal healthcare. So, the word, “politics,” when it is used pejoratively, really just means, “I disagree with what you said so I don’t want you to be allowed to say it.” I want to learn how to say it in a way that invites dialogue, not in a way that just draws a line in the sand.

 

Maybe we get to universal access of healthcare through insurance companies, maybe there could be a public option, maybe we have some blending of the two, but if you just want 30 million people to be without healthcare . . . well, no one really wants to be a sociopath, right? 

 

I get so angry when those fund-raising ads come on TV from Shriners Hospitals and St Jude’s . . . both institutions do praiseworthy work, but we have to trot out little kids with cancer or grievous birth defects to beg for the money for them to get healthcare? You don’t see this kind of ad in Japan, or France, or Germany, not even in Russia, or poor countries like Thailand, Nicaragua, or Mexico because in those countries they know that a kid who can’t walk or a kid who has cancer needs to be given proper healthcare and not be used like a circus pony on TV to get donations. I believe that Americans are better than this, I just want to know what stands in the way of our humanity?

 

Not all conversations are worth having. I’m not going to give much time to anyone who is convinced that the Democrats are running a pedophile ring out of the basement of a DC pizza parlor. And, just because you have a civil relationship to offer to someone doesn’t mean that they have one to offer to you, but one thing is certain, if we avoid talking about the hard stuff, no one ever learns, no one ever changes, and we all fail.

 

Let me try a completely different illustration on you: In a plea deal, Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange has been released from a British prison where he had served nearly 6 years after having spent a decade avoiding arrest by living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. There are those who believe that Assange was a hero of journalism and free speech and others who believe that he was guilty of some of the worst espionage crimes of this century. 

 

I have been conversations where the mere mention of his name divided the room into adamant factions. The relevant question in his case is not whether he is a really great guy or not. I don’t know anyone who wants to carry his banner in a debate about character but, was his release of stolen documents a journalistic coups, exposing war crimes and holding the American government accountable for having hidden and lied about these crimes, or is his dump of thousands of pages of classified documents a crime that placed many secret undercover agents in grave danger? 

 

Well, he did both, didn’t he? Which is more important, exposing the Obama administration’s refusal to prosecute soldiers who murdered journalists and first responders on the battlefield in Afghanistan, or leaking information that could expose undercover sources? Chelsea Manning, who provided the information to Wikileaks, and Assange have both served years in prison for this leak but the soldiers who murdered journalists and medics were not punished, and, for that matter, the New York Times and several British and European news sources that published the leaked material were not charged with any crime. How can Manning and Assange be guilty, and the media just gets a pass? 

 

I could argue either side of this issue though, as you might imagine, I lean towards supporting leaking information about war crimes in order to keep our government or any other government honest. To that point, bronze statues of Assange, Manning, along with Edward Snowden have been erected in Berlin in praise of their courage . . . Germans know about the danger of allowing a government to operate in secrecy under the cover of propaganda.

 

I have heard a number of people I really like get very mad about this issue but what I have never heard is a civil conversation among people who have honest disagreements about it. 

 

That is a conversation I would love to be a part of but to date, any attempt at discussing the facts becomes a partisan condemnation of either the leakers or the government. 

There is an anonymous modern proverb that I really love that says: We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when adults are afraid of the light. The internet will repeatedly tell you that this is a quote from either Socrates or Plato but, because it is a priority in my life to defend the corpus of Greek philosophy, I can assure you that this didn’t come from Socrates or Plato or any other ancient source but whoever said it doesn’t need a false attribution to support it because it is painfully and obviously true. The reason we can’t get some cases to trial is the same as the reason we can’t have a civil conversation about some controversial topics . . . it is because someone is afraid of the light. That, I contend, is shameful.

 

I cannot claim that I am always right, in fact, I would disagree with a number of things I have said in the past; but I can claim that I have always been honest and if a church is not willing to be exposed to an honest exploration of matters of ethics, well, who would want to attend a church that is afraid of the light?

 

When I moved here a year and a half ago, I knew I was moving to a very red state, just like the state I was leaving. So, I came here the first week I came to town  because I want to sit in a room for an hour in this deeply red state, surrounded by people who largely see the world the way that I do. I also need to feel that I am not all alone in the world. Still, it just might be that the most important messages you hear are the ones in which you had to endure a difference of opinion. Don’t only seek confirmation of your own bias. 

 

Remain willing to step into the light and heat of honest disagreement on important topics. The only way out of our current dangerous political and ideological quagmire is to engage one another in the light of honest dialogue.

My favorite British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, left us with this hope, he said:

I allow myself to hope that the world will emerge from its present troubles, that it will one day learn to give the direction of its affairs, not to cruel swindlers and scoundrels, but to people possessed of wisdom and courage. 

 

I suggest that we give ourselves to that hope. America’s democracy is seriously in danger of giving way to oligarchy and fascism because of our deep partisan divide. If we hope to remove cruel swindlers and scoundrels from power, we have to value wisdom and courage. Here is a challenge for you, celebrate this Independence Day by having a civil conversation with a MAGA supporter.

The Long Road Out of Prejudice

The Long Road Out of Prejudice  

June 29, 2025    Dr. Roger Ray

 

Speaking at Spirit of Life UU in Odesa, FL re Pride Week

 

click here to see the video

 

I want to thank you for the invitation to speak here today. I am a fairly recent transplant to Florida as it was just over a year ago that I joined the migration of old people who are sick and tired of putting up with winter weather and headed south. I joined the UU church that is around the block from my home in Vero Beach where I found about a dozen other retired ministers who were there for the same reason that I am. I am speaking there next Sunday, there are so many of us that it has taken a year for it to be my turn to fill in for Rev. Tom, I hope that I get another crack at your pulpit before it is my turn in Vero Beach again!

 

When I was invited to speak here, I was reminded that it is Pride Month and the suggestion was made that I try to mention that theme, which really took me on a flood of memories. When I was still a denominational pastor in the Christian Church, I was called to a big church in Springfield, Missouri in 1991. The city was still embroiled in a controversy sparked by a play performed at the local state university called, The Normal Heart, that delt with AIDS and the LGBTQ+ community. At my very first board meeting, an elderly lady on the board, ironically, a woman who shared her home with another adult woman for her entire life, rose to demand of me, “Just what are you going to do about the homosexual problem?” 

 

I had only been in town for a week, but I knew this question wasn’t just about the public controversy. I knew that the unspoken challenge had to do with the rumor that the church’s associate pastor was gay. The major theme of the next ten years of my life were mapped out in that moment. My decision that night to do whatever I had to do to protect Rev. Charlie from the lynching I saw in the eyes of several board members led me into a years-long circuit of speaking engagements in university and seminary classes, along with TV and radio interviews, and newspaper columns, about religion and sexual orientation. 

 

All of us who are straight supporters of gay rights, have a story to tell about how own journey out of the prejudice that we were probably reared with and the steps we had to take to escape the prison of prejudice, and I would love to hear your stories but today, oddly enough, I have the microphone. 

 

I grew up in the Christian Church in the little county seat town of Glasgow, KY. I do not recall the issue of homosexuality being mentioned at all until I was a college student. The prejudice that was a part of daily conversation in my growing up years was racial prejudice and so, with your permission, I would like to start there by sharing a story with you that I heard the late Fred Craddock tell at a conference in Texas over 40 years ago. Fred was a famous preacher in those days and as a storyteller, you can generally assume that his stories were not historically factual but, as it turns out, they were still true.

 

He told us about a little boy named Jimmy, who lived in a little Texas town where it happened that all of the little boys his age that he played with in the neighborhood were black. It was a bit uncomfortable for his white parents, but he was just a kid and kids are going to play, so they never said anything about it.

Jimmy was unique, as kids go, because Jimmy loved going to church. He loved the stained-glass windows, he loved the way the pipe organ made their old oak pews vibrate, he loved the choir processing in their colorful robes. He loved everything about it, from the women in hats and gloves, right down to the preacher’s sweaty red face when he got all tuned up. 

 

The only thing that bothered him about church was that his friends couldn’t come with him. They were always sitting on the church steps, waiting for Jimmy to come out and play, but Jimmy just couldn’t understand why his friends couldn’t come inside with him. The subject came up at Sunday dinner almost every week when Jimmy would demand an explanation: Daddy, why can’t my friends come to church with me? You are too young to understand, it’s just the way things are. But Daddy, couldn’t they come, just once? Hush up now son, eat your dinner before it gets cold.

 

One week, there was funeral at the church and, as always, Jimmy was there. And he saw all of the people at the funeral who were not usually at his church and so that night, at dinner, he asked: Daddy, when I die, can my friends come to my funeral? 

What are you talking about son, you are not going to die. 

No, no, Daddy, tell me, when I die, can my friends come to my funeral? 

Hush up boy, you are upsetting your mother! 

Daddy, I need to know, can my friends come to my funeral?

Well, I suppose so, but let it go now, we’re eating.

 

The people in town didn’t know . . . was it an accident? Why did Jimmy just run out in front of that truck like that? The town was in shock.

Three days later the church was packed for the funeral, and Jimmy’s little friends were all sitting in the front row of the church when the preacher stood up to deliver the eulogy. He began: I don’t know if it was an accident or if Jimmy ran out in front of that truck on purpose, but I do know this – this town only had one prophet and now he is dead. 

 

You see, the thing about prejudice is that for most people, it is almost entirely unconscious. I grew up in the American Apartheid of segregated schools, churches, restrooms, and water fountains. When I was old enough to turn a bale of hay or set a tobacco plant, I worked on the farm with the black kids of the tenet farmer, but it never even occurred to me that I never saw them in my school or my church. I never thought about it until that day in 5^th grade when eight or nine frightened black kids were escorted into my classroom as integration began in a fog of confusion and fear. 

 

I remember the day when the municipal swimming pool was integrated, and my mother came to pick my brother and me up and she was horrified to see us in the water with black kids. She literally took us home and demanded that we bathe and scrub ourselves hard in case, well, I don’t really know what she was afraid of . . . but it was a hot summer and thank God she got over it. 

 

Prejudice, conscious or unconscious, becomes just a short-hand way of navigating the world. Prejudice doesn’t go away the first time it is challenged. And when you think it is all over, something happens to make you realize that it isn’t over yet. We got through school integration, the integration of the pool, the little league baseball team, department stores and rest rooms. But I was home from college one weekend and watching TV with my family, on the Dick VanDyke show, their college aged son brought his black girlfriend home to meet the TV sitcom family . . . and that’s when I discovered where the reserve of prejudice was hiding in my family. My father turned to me and my brother and told us that if we ever dated a black girl that we would find all of our stuff in the driveway and to not even come in to say goodbye. 

 

Impulsively, I stood up and walked to the phone on the kitchen wall and called Marsha Troutman, the prettiest and blackest young woman I had ever met, and asked her out to dinner. I left to pick her up for dinner and then came home to see if my clothes would be in the driveway. They were not and the subject was never brought up again. 

 

I was infected with racial prejudice. I am only five generations removed from slave traders. It was a part of my family inheritance, but that night, I had decided to break the chain. I am confident that my father died a racist, but he died knowing t hat he had not passed the poison on to me. Before he died, I had adopted a little brown girl from Korea and he had to pretend for 20 years that he liked her, at least a little.

 

I spent 16 years in that church in Missouri, defending Rev. Charlie and other members of the church who were in the LGBTQ community. For more than a decade I was the only Christian pastor in town who conducted same sex weddings before they could be legally recognized. My church wouldn’t let me do them in the church. Even after we had gay elders and deacons and Sunday School teachers. 

 

There were often protestors marching up and down the sidewalk in front of the church. Twice a cinder black was thrown through the windshield of my car during Sunday services. There were death threats and nasty letters.

 

At first I did same sex weddings far out of town, then in restaurants and homes. Once I asked the board, when a gay person donates money to the church, does that go into a different fund or does it get put in the bank with straight donations? 

So, at long last, in 2007, I was permitted to do a same sex wedding in the church and, coincidentally, I was fired three months later. 

 

That board meeting lasted well past midnight and though there were no visible torches and pitchforks, there was a lot of anger emboldened by ignorance. I vowed to never go to church again but thankfully there was the UU church where I could take refuge…. And, as many of my critics assured me, the UU isn’t really a church anyway, is it? The church went into steep decline as they continued to battle internally with what they had done to me. They fired a few more people over the next few years but, in the end, my vindication came when they hired a married gay pastor. 

 

I apologize, I made it sound like I was something like Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves without the help of black prophets…. It wasn’t like that, it wasn’t all me and an awful lot of really fine gay, lesbian, and trans folks paid a much bigger personal price than I did in that slow transformation. 

 

The gist of what I’m saying is that things do get better. There is still racial prejudice in America, but America is not what it was in the 1960’s. 

There is still homophobia in America, but most gay people can now be out and proud without fear of losing their job or their family. 

But we had Roe v Wade in place for 50 years, granting women autonomy over their own bodies, and one summer, just a few years ago, we saw that taken away. We finally won victories in the arena of gay marriage and gay and trans folks serving in the military but already the trans soldiers are being told to pack up and get out. Already we have a Supreme Court Justice wanting to overturn the decision that legalized same sex marriage. 

 

Yes, we have made a lot of progress in the past two generations for women, for minorities, for the LGBTQ+ community, but nothing is certain. We cannot take any of our liberties or successes for granted. 

 

In the past decade, most of my favorite churches have become smaller and weaker, barely holding onto existence, but if ever there was a time when all of our towns needed a prophet, isn’t this that time? Will the prophets come from our churches? Will they be politicians and statesmen? God help me, could it be a child, just a kid who loves his black friends, or his gay uncle, or his pregnant big sister? Who is going to speak up? Who will be a voice for the voiceless? 

I  will close with a few lines from the Irish musician, Theo Bard’s song, “Fickle World of Change”

Can you stand up and be counted as a body in a crowd

Put your name on a petition with your signature so proud

Can you raise your voice so loud as you sand with head unbowed

When they are beating on your brow demanding answers here and now

Cause that’s how you make a difference in this fickle world of change.

 

 

“Radicalized by Basic Decency”

 

  June 1, 2025    Dr. Roger Ray

click here to see the video

 

My weekday routine is to have a cup of coffee, catch up with the news while I dress to play racquetball and then I head over to my old health club where there are about a half a dozen men who are old enough to remember what racquetball is. We range in age between 50 and 83 and I am not proud so say that my win loss ratio with the 83 year old ex-marine is about 1 to 5. He is amazing. . . and I kinda hate him.

 

But I recently had to call for the club’s security guard to help me with a guy who had become absurdly difficult. The guy in question, when he learned that I am a minister, began to try to talk church business with me and when he learned that I am not a traditional Christian, that I don’t believe in heaven or hell, souls, demons, angels, supernatural theism, nor the Loch Ness Monster, the Tooth Fairy, or, regardless of my appearance, I don’t even believe in Santa Claus, he became enraged.

 

And day after day, he would try to debate me using Biblical quotes and eventually by shouting at me, with a really creepy smile on his face, telling me that I am going to hell. When the other guys tried to get him to leave me alone, he shouted even louder that I was teaching a false gospel and leading people astray. I repeatedly told him that I didn’t want to discuss religion with him, but nothing could seem to stop him. 

When I refused to play with him anymore, he started putting scripture quotes in my gym bag. After several complaints about his harassment, the club finally told them that they would ban him from the club if he bothered me again. 

 

I have lived in Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and now Florida, so I have had a lot of exposure to right wing evangelicals and even though I am used to hate mail and even called in and emailed threats from these guys, I have never encountered anyone who was so singularly obsessed with trying to make me afraid of going to his imaginary hell. 

Sadly, this annoying character is neither unique nor rare. He is a man trapped in a prison made entirely out of religious beliefs that have been drilled into him, probably since early childhood. It is a prison composed of absolutes. As I mentioned in my last message, there are religions that have taught people that God will send you to hell if you get a divorce, or if you are gay. Others adamantly insist that you will go to hell unless you are a part of their specific group, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Church of Christ, the Mormons, or, in many instances, the Catholic Church. 

 

My in-laws, decades ago, went to a non-instrumental Church of Christ and they believed that you not only had to be a Christian with all of the dogmatic teachings that usually involves, but you also had to be baptized by immersion, and, if you went to a church that used instrumental music in their services, an organ, a piano, or, God forbid, a guitar or drums, that you would also go to hell for that. How could anyone worship such a petty God? 

 

I was a young philosophy major in college when I gave up on believing in hell. It was simply too absurd to think that any deity could be so cruel and inexcusably mean. But for a whole lot of people, hell poses the threat by which they were taught how to behave. And you mind adapts to the environment in which you are raised. Thankfully, most of us think our way out of that mental prison by many never do. They are not taught not to steal, or lie, or use drugs, or get drunk, or pay for sex because such things are bad for you and reflect a lack of character, they were taught that their morality was rooted in a fear of punishment, eternal punishment, fire and brimstone, agony without end. 

 

And when such a person encounters someone who just refuses to be trapped in that exchange of piety to avoid eternal fire, they are terrified that they might be infected by the “false gospel” that finds such fear to be laughable. 

 

And when you have been taught to stay out of the saloons and brothels lest you be thrown into hell, and you start to think that maybe all of that hell stuff is just made up to control you, then what is there to keep you out of the saloons and brothels? I suspect, for people like my racquetball playing acquaintance, not much at all. It may be that fear is the only thing, in his old age, that has constrained him for decades.

 

Now, this is an extreme case, but for the whole of the church, temple, mosque, and cathedral going public, they are still taught that they world is defined by certain moral absolutes that have come down to them from on high. This is part of what fascinates me about the public attention given to the election of a new Catholic pope, replete with all of the hand wringing about whether he approves of gay marriage or not, will he consider ordaining women, and might he do something crazy, like suggesting that eating meat on Friday is a mortal sin.

 

I can barely keep from yelling at my TV during their around the clock coverage of the new pope that no one can decide for the world if being gay is a sin. No one can rationally say that you have to have a penis to preach, consecrate communion, or baptize someone. I have been baptizing, serving communion, and preaching since 1978 and I have never once used my penis in the process. What on earth are people thinking? And what kind of a genitals obsessed deity would make a rule that allowed morons who were male to preach and keep brilliant, educated women out of the pulpit? Honestly, people should be embarrassed for what surely amounts to blasphemy, if such a thing can actually exit. 

 

My favorite quote from the late Pope Francis was when, in reference to gay relationships, he said, “Who am I to judge?” Yes, Amen! Not the pope, not an imam, not a rabbi or a priest gets to dictate moral absolutes. But the difficult thing for many people who have spent their lives trapped in the mental prison built by religious teachings is, when you step out of that cage, you have no one to give you moral boundaries. 

You have laws. There is the police, there are courts, which are hopefully crafted to protect the well being of society, but on a personal level, the horrifying reality is that you have to decide for yourself. And, like it or not, morality is an ever moving target. 

 

I trust that we can all agree that pedophilia is wrong. Even if they agree to a proposal, no 9-year-old should be allowed to get married. Still, we know that the Prophet Muhammad, in his late 50s, married his third wife, Aisha, when she was 6 years old. Many of his friends told him that it was a bad idea, but it was still done in the 7^th century. Muhammad defended the marriage saying that he did not consummate the marriage until Aisha was 9 but that doesn’t really help much, even though this was more than 1300 years and 8000 miles from us. Many modern Muslims have spun like tops trying to deny the historical fact that Muhammad married a child, but it was accepted for centuries until modern defenders of the faith have tried to silence this historical fact. 

But you might find it even more disturbing to learn that less than 200 years ago, the famous American writer and poet, Edgar Allan Poe, at the age of 27 married Virginia Clem who was 13 years old. . . which is made a bit more of a bitter pill to swallow since Virginia was his first cousin. 1836, just not that long ago and not far away at all. It was not uncommon to marry a cousin in the 19^th century, but still, was it wrong?

 

My 18^th century paternal family ran a slave plantation in Kentucky on which they built, for the community, a non-instrumental Church of Christ where it was morally fine to own dozens of slaves but if you played a piano during your Sunday services you would go to hell. Religion can be very funny that way. 

 

In the mid 1990’s I actually got involved in Missouri’s state legislature to amend the state’s crime bill. I was teaching religion at Drury University and learned that one of my students, a 19-year-old woman, was working at a local strip club, and she and her boyfriend were fighting because he, at age 19 was not old enough to go into the club to offer some protection from exploitation. The irony was too much for me. I had recently officiated at the wedding of my state legislator and so I used my contact with him to get an appointment in his office to insist that if a 20 year old man is not old enough to go into a strip club, an 18 year old girl shouldn’t be allowed to give naked lap dances there. It was a small victory and a short lived one as my student assured me that all of her fellow dancers obtained fake IDs and went back to work; but I tried to protect them, even if they didn’t want to be protected.

 

But I hope that you get my point, neither religion nor the law and certainly not a majority public opinion can dictate moral absolutes. I don’t believe that God had had anything to do with the writing of the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran, or the Upanishads. I don’t believe that God rewards piety or punishes sins. But I still don’t use drugs, or get drunk in saloons, or pay for sex. Not because of God, a church, a priest, or even the law, I choose to live by a different moral code because I don’t want to be the kind of person who exploits the vulnerable or puts society at risk, driving under the influence. 

My religion does not demand that I be a good person, I’m religious because I choose to strive to be a good person. God doesn’t create a moral society through religious laws and a threat of judgement; people who want to be good people create religions that might offer guidance, even with a host of mistakes along the way. 

 

There are no hard and fast rules. We have to be willing to enter into dialogue with the moral universe every day. I have been to Honduras often enough that I know that children are used in agriculture there. So, when I see fruit and melons from Honduras in my neighborhood grocery, I refuse to buy it. However, I have an Apple iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPad in my hands several hours a day and this sermon was written on an Apple MacBook and I’m pretty sure that child labor and sweat shop conditions were a part of all four of those products coming into my possession and the mere fact that I like them, or are addicted to them, and owning them is legal and everyone else does it . . . . which is pretty much how Muhammad and Edgar Allan Poe justified their marriage choices and how my ancestors justified the uncompensated internship program for African immigrants on their plantation, we all know that ethics is not determined by law, the marketplace, or public opinion. 

 

I might be inclined to try to convince Tim Cook that Apple’s labor practices are wretched, but I’m not willing to give up my Apple products, at least not yet.  And I know that at least some of you are still stuck back five minutes ago when I told you that I tried to set an age limit on when a young woman could be exploited by the sex industry, thinking that if they wanted to work there that it was none of my business. And if you think that, well, you suck but this is a one way form of communication and there isn’t much that either of us can do about that. 

 

I’m saying that if you lack clarity about morality, you do not have a deficiency of religion. You have a deficiency of conscience. And conscience, sadly, is not innate. Having a conscience is a matter of choice and that is a choice which many people simply fail to make. While I have my own failings and hypocrisies, to the extent to which I am a good person, I am a good person only because I was radicalized by basic human decency. 

 

I will have more to say on this topic in my July 6^th message at the Unitarian Church in Vero Beach which will be posted here on July 13^th.