by Charlie Clements, UUSC President

A sermon given March 25, 2007

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

You may not be aware of it, but there is heated debate going on among evangelical Christians in the U.S. right now about “the great moral issues of our day.” The Reverend James Dobson is publicly attacking the chairman of the National Association of Evangelicals, Reverend Rich Cizik, because Cizik has staked out the position that global warming is a moral issue with which Christians should get involved. Dobson says this is distracting us from the real moral issues of our time: namely abortion and euthanasia, sex outside of marriage, and gay marriage.

Meanwhile, what’s going on at First Unitarian? Whether it is what we have to do as individuals or in public policy, you’re acting on global warming. You are speaking out about the war in Iraq and its devastating consequences . . . there and here. You are doing something about the injustice of globalization. You are out there providing public witness to your deeply held beliefs.

More than any other Unitarian Universalist community that I’ve experienced, you, the members of this congregation, really strive to live your values. Of course, we all try to do that, but you “walk your talk.” 

Okay, I will concede that you have Marilyn Sewell . . . and Tom Disrud . . . and Kate Lore to coax and inspire you, but it’s more than them.  Other churches have great leadership, but their sum isn’t greater than the total of the parts.

What’s going on here? This isn’t idle speculation. As a public health physician, I want to know if what you’ve got here is contagious. If it is, then we may be able to infect other congregations . . . we could cause an epidemic of justice-seeking behavior.

I think Wendell Berry has a partial diagnosis. Berry has written that “protest that endures is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.” I am going to repeat that slowly. Protest that endures . . . is moved by a hope . . . far more modest than that of public success:  namely, the hope of preserving qualities . . . in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.

And, it is that about you, which makes it possible to preach about the genocide in Darfur today. I have wrestled with this topic and how to find the right words. I vowed to myself that I would not preach about it unless I could leave you uplifted . . . and we will only know if I succeed by your actions in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

I don’t think there is a more succinct description of what is happening in Sudan today than the reading by Elie Wiesel shared earlier. Yet he spoke those words almost three years ago. What has changed since he spoke those powerful words almost three years ago?

The numbers have changed. The number of people who have been ethnically cleansed from their homes and villages has now doubled from one to two million. Another significant change is that we no longer read about what our own State Department labeled genocide, either on the front pages of our newspapers, nor do we any longer see the horror on our television screens.

President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan has learned the lessons of “out of sight, out of mind.” Thus, he has banned journalists. He has banned human rights monitors. Now he has even banned the very humanitarian workers who used to staff many of the refugee camps in Darfur; Americans are not permitted outside a radius of twenty-five miles from Khartoum. The killing grounds and camps are hundreds of miles to the west.

If it weren’t for the very determined and courageous reporting by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, we would have few updates from Darfur. Rev. Bill Sinkford, President of the UUA, Atema Eclai, UUSC’s Program Director, and I delivered one from the refugee camps in Chad eighteen months ago. There, just across the border from Darfur, are crowded collections of plastic sheets, tattered cloth shelters, and mud structures in an incredibly inhospitable environment where 30,000 to 60,000 people hang onto life by their finger nails. I give that range of 30,000 because when we visited that was the population of one of the camps. At that time the humanitarian aid workers and visitors like us were on emergency alert—we were told to be prepared to evacuate on short notice.  In other words, keep your luggage within reach. A few months after we visited, that and other unprotected camps were attacked by the janjaweed and that particular camp has doubled in size to 60,000.

Janjaweed is the name given to the militias who identify as Arabs; they are largely pastoralists and herders. They have been armed by the government of Sudan and encouraged to take whatever they can plunder from other Sudanese, who identify themselves as Africans. They are mostly farmers. The janjaweed plunder land, animals, grains, water, women, and children. Desertification and drought has heightened the competition between the Arabs and the Africans for land and water. The Africans and Arabs are both Black and they are both Muslim. And the Africans have formed their own armed groups to fight for their survival.

Bill Sinkford and I sat with men, while Atema Eclai sat with women as they told us their stories . . . stories of pillage, rape, murder, and sometimes captivity. It was neither easy for them to tell nor for us to hear their accounts. We cried with them and we told them that we admired their courage. We thanked them for their willingness to relive this pain that was still so raw. We promised that we would bear witness by bringing their stories to America, where we would seek out hearts and spirits that would not acquiesce to genocide. And so I seek you out today.  

In the United States there is a widespread and misguided belief that there is little or nothing that we can do about Darfur. I know that leads to a lot of despair and so we turn away from Darfur. We turn away from the suffering, because we don’t know how to fix it. Our lives are all overly full and we ask ourselves, “How can I find time for yet one more cause?” So we answer ourselves by deciding, “I’ll focus on something where I know I can make a difference.”

The way I am going to lift you up today is to ensure that you leave church knowing without a doubt that you can do something about Darfur. I want you to believe that if you can give 10 or 15 minutes a week, you can make a difference. I want you to engage in protest that endures, because not to do so would be to acquiesce and that’s all evil needs to triumph. Omar al-Bashir and his janjaweed murderers are counting on us to be overwhelmed. They need us to feel helpless.

No matter how busy we are I believe that in our default position the minimum we can do is to remain well informed. Why is that? Being informed gives us the possibility of a moral response. You may recall last year that I gave a sermon about Martha and Waitstill Sharp, the Unitarian minister and his wife, who plunged into Europe as WWII was breaking out. As others fled Europe, they rushed in armed only with their faith and determination to set up a relief and rescue operation, which by war’s end had helped 2,000 men, women, and children escape the Nazi terror.

Last summer they became only the second and third Americans honored among some 21,000 people around the world as “Righteous among the Nations” by Israel for risking their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

In 1939 the American Unitarian Association approached sixteen ministers before they found one who would say yes to the mission to Czechoslovakia. Martha and Waitstill Sharp were aware of what was happening to Jews and others who opposed the Nazis, because they got first-hand reports from another Unitarian couple that conducted fact-finding missions to Europe in 1937 and 1938. They would debrief for hours over dinner and hear reports about Unitaria, the largest Unitarian church in the world at that time in Prague. Being informed gave the Sharps the possibility of a moral choice.

And because Darfur is not on the front pages of our newspapers or on our television screens, we must seek out information on the Internet. Once a week turn to uusc.org or SaveDarfur.org for an update on the focus of advocacy. It doesn’t have to take long. If you sign up for UUSC’s Drumbeat for Darfur campaign, downstairs in Fuller Hall during the coffee hour, we’ll automatically keep you up to date and alert you about urgent actions.

You can wear a bracelet like this. Let it be a reminder to talk to someone about Darfur or make a telephone call. I encourage people to develop a habit . . . get up, brush your teeth, and then call 800-genocide. It will connect you with the White House, your Senator, or your Representative. Tell the White House, “We want the world’s only super power to play a leadership role in ending the genocide in Darfur – now. President Bush did in it southern Sudan and now you can do it again in western Sudan.”

Many Americans are unaware that there was a similar civil war raging in the south of Sudan, a conflict that in a decade had taken two million lives, until enough evangelical Christians put pressure on the White House. President Bush helped broker a negotiation, which ended that protracted conflict.

You also need to know that about a year ago at this time President Omar al-Bashir blocked the supplies allowed into the refugee camps, so almost two million people’s already marginal existence was threatened by half rations. It was a test. Rallies were held around the world, mobilizing tens of thousands of calls to national leaders including Bush. We forced al-Bashir to back down and humanitarian assistance began to flow again. He was counting on our doing nothing, but orchestrated and focused advocacy made the difference. It does work.   

We don’t have the ability yet to force al-Bashir to accept U.N. peace keeping forces, but in September he did agree to allow the African Union monitoring forces to be strengthened with U.N. equipment. He has now reneged on that agreement and we need to help him keep his word.

We need to put economic pressure on the countries that aid and abet genocide. One of them is China and the way we pressure China here in Portland is that we ask individuals to divest from Fidelity, which has a half billion dollars worth of shares in PetroChina. PetroChina is one of two major Chinese oil companies that prop up al-Bashir’s government. Human Rights Watch estimates that 70% of Sudan’s oil revenues are used to purchase arms. If this church’s endowment or your retirement fund manager has Fidelity funds, we ask you to seek other investments and let the fund managers know why. Berkshire Hathaway is the other big offender and soon we’ll go after it.

Both Fidelity and Berkshire Hathaway say, “While we certainly empathize with your concerns, we have a legal and fiduciary responsibility as an investment company to provide the highest possible returns to our customers…” In other words, if we can profit on genocide, we are obliged to do so. That’s what companies said in the beginning of the anti-apartheid boycott of South Africa. Remember the colleges and universities used the slippery slope argument that they couldn’t possibly respond to this kind of social pressure lest it make them vulnerable to the every whimsical cause that came along? Well guess what, Harvard has already divested. In April 2005, almost two years ago, the Harvard Committee on Investment said, “We believe the unique set of circumstances relating PetroChina to the crisis in Sudan counsels in favor of the extraordinary step of divestment.”

The UUA has recently written to all of the ministers in the UUMA asking them to switch from one genocide-tainted Fidelity fund to a clean one in their retirement portfolios. We can send a signal to China and Sudan with Fidelity out of Darfur.

Your tax dollars are helping fund genocide. Your Oregon tax dollars pay the wages and retirement benefits of state employees here. Their retirement portfolio has many Fidelity funds as do the retirement portfolios of 22 other Americans. I will return to Massachusetts this week to testify before the state legislature and we will pass a divestment bill for the state pension fund. California has already done it. What happened at the polls in November here should make a similar bill possible in Oregon. I am certain you do not want your tax dollars abetting genocide.

We can widen the circle of people aware of what’s happening in Darfur by showing the documentary “Heroes of the Spirit.” Yesterday morning I screened it for 150 college and university student leaders at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and then we screened it again here last night.  You can buy one for $10 on our website and send it as a gift to a friend or family member. The 24 minute film is directed by Academy Award winning film maker Deborah Shaffer. It links the inspiring story of the Sharps’ actions in the Holocaust with our response to the situation in Darfur today.

Bill Schulz, the chairman of our board and now a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at the Kennedy School at Harvard University, and I were recently in a gathering with Samantha Powers, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. In response to a question, Samantha pointed out that there had never been an organized movement to stop genocide . . . the other ones Biafra, Cambodia, Rwanda happened too quickly. We can all be part of this movement. If we have no time for anything else, we can order a yard sign from Save Darfur.org and make a statement that every neighbor, every driver passing by will see.

In Needham, Massachusetts there is a sign in every four or fifth yard. They, as a community, are making a statement. You can order yard signs from SaveDarfur.org. You can order a large banner that says Not on Our Watch.

And now I come back to the title of my sermon, “When Can Never Again Mean Never Again?” It can mean never again when enough of us find 15 minutes a week to Save Darfur. As Wendell Berry teaches us, it can mean never again when enough of us discover that something precious in our hearts and spirits is endangered if acquiescence to evil. The deepest and most hopeful lesson of our times is that we surely can transform the world around us with our actions and that our actions in turn can transform our own hearts and spirits. 

Perhaps Atema Eclai, a Kenyan and UUSC’s Program Director, puts it most simply in “Heroes of the Spirit,” when she says, “Think of those who are suffering in Darfur today as your blood brothers and your blood sisters . . . and then act.” When enough of us think as she suggests, then never again can really mean never again.

I closed my sermon last year with some words from the Talmud, which I find reassuring. They are still appropriate today.  “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Walk humbly now. Love mercy now. Do justly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” 

Amen.

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Copyright 2007, Charlie Clements.  All rights reserved.