On Thursday of last week, at a unique gathering of interfaith clergy, city and educational leaders from cities along the peninsula which I had the privilege of helping to plan, one of our panelists, Rabbi Ari Cartun, a liberal Jewish leader, explained that in Judaism the "clergy" are not seen as any more human, or close to God, than anyone else. What Rabbis do, however, is teach. In our English language, "to teach" comes from a root word that means, "to show, present, point out."

This morning I want to be your Rabbi. It's something I do a couple of times a year. I want to present some things, to point out some things central to our lives at this point in history as I understand them. This is not a sermon meant to stir feelings of comfort. It is meant to expose things, to bring up what is hidden from common view and lay them on our common table. In my role as Rabbi, I word what I see, I put it into language so that the things I speak of will be seen and seen more clearly. And therein, in languaging what I see, lies whatever hope I may offer this morning. It is important to know, as well, that Rabbis never expect 100% agreement about what they teach.

With your permission, then, I will begin.

We have entered a dangerous time. All around us the set of promises upon which civilization is based, are being broken. All around us there is talk of war. All around us there is the threat of wild, uncontrollable violence, violence driven by people who hate---people who hate us, we here in this room, and our sisters and brothers across this vast nation. All around us the American flag is emblazoned on cars and store windows, on the lapels of business persons and media anchors, and on the nose cones of bombs, bombs called smart. In the midst of this, over and over our President delivers confusing messages that stun our grieving hearts, messages like, "I want to send the signal to our enemy that you have aroused a compassionate and decent and mighty nation, and we're going to hunt you down."

All around us in these dangerous times, the level of discourse has been reduced to a sickening pablum of acquiescence; the bandwidth of political debate has been reduced to, "You are either for us, or against us." All around us we are wrapped in the chilling cloak of conformity that smothers the very life of democracy, spearheaded by none other than the very media that is meant to foment authentic debate: "Mr. President, where do you want me to line up?"---the message of one famous anchorman. All around us dissent has, once again, been labeled as wrong, as aiding the enemy, as un american.

We are living in a dangerous time. Decades of progressive and humane policies in support of human rights in this country are being crushed in an ideological convulsion that reeks of racism, Christo-centrism and militarism. Hard won restrictions on the covert activities of governmental agencies such as the FBI and the CIA, which have proven track records of abusing democracy when unchecked, are being lifted---even though those agencies already have more than the necessary powers needed to protect us, and have none-the-less failed to do so. All around us people of color and of non-European ancestry are experiencing increased harassment and indefinite incarceration by local and national policing agencies.

All around us our political leaders are proclaiming, and asking us to believe, that a massive military assault on a small middle eastern country where millions of dollars a day will be spent on deploying weapons of mass destruction against it and its people will not distort nor harm our economy, nor our internal social goals, nor our sense of ourselves as a humane and democratic nation.

We are being powerfully distracted by a focus on war with Iraq from raising questions about the worst corporate malfeasance our country has ever known, about the gutting of responsible environmental policies, and about electoral fraud---that in the view of many respected analysts illegitimately placed the loser of the presidential election into the White House, and into command of our military---and now our morality.

Shortly after his inauguration, President Bush gave a speech at Iowa Western Community College. During that speech he said, "When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who They were." He went on, "It was Us vs. Them, and it was clear who Them was. Today, we are not so sure who the They are, but we know They're there." Is this prescience? Is this a shrewd, worldly-wise assessment of the reål-politic at the beginning of the twenty-first century? Or, does this tell us something about the very theological ground that underlies this man's vision of life. That is, that what is good in life is always under attack by the forces of evil---that there can be no rest from that assault---and, that the only way for our nation to survive in this world, with the special blessing from God, who is Himself under assault, is not to develop creative and humane ways to realize peace, but, rather, always to work on developing a bigger stick than your enemies.

We are indeed in a culture war. We are indeed locked into a struggle for the very soul of this nation, a struggle that is grounded in deep and ancient visions of how the universe is structured. We must make no mistake about it, the fundamental issues at stake here are "What theological and philosophical vision will capture the hearts of our nation and the world in this century?" And, "Will we survive our tenure in its grasp?"

As your Rabbi for this morning, I want to offer three different powerful perspectives for understanding what our government is doing. Each of them concerns a different way of focusing on the problem, but each of them exposes something, I believe, about the theology that is driving the current administration, the members of which claim to be committed Christians.

The first view I already introduced to you in my newsletter column, dated October 4th. There I shared some insights of Professor Fred Block, UC Davis sociologist whose focus is on "The Market," that is, the philosophy of a market driven economy. He writes about how the political and religious right wings of this country have united to promote the belief that "the market is something like a divine force that always calls forth moral behavior." What this belief leads to, Block continues, is the conviction that "Liberalism and socialism are obviously in error because they are godless efforts to interfere with the natural and divine logic of the market."

Block's refutation of this belief cuts cleanly through its destructively narrow and dehumanizing logic with this powerful insight: "The moral flaws in the argument about the divine nature of the market are . . . obvious. Responding to market signals and behaving morally are two completely different things."

The present administration, however, does not understand Block's refutation. They continue to cling to the philosophy of the sacredness of the Market as the very underpinning for their economic vision. That philosophy is clearly spelled out in the National Security Strategy paper, produced by the Bush administration in September of this year. That document opens with a letter from the President himself with these words: "The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom---and here is the key phrase---and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise,"

"A single sustainable model for national success!!!!!"

In all of the vast creative energies of humankind, we are asked to believe that there is now only a single set of fundamentals that can produce healthy countries. There is no room for any other! According to this proclamation there is no room for another, for the ONE other, has been vanquished. To me, this is Fundamentalism in action. It does not matter what the formula of that SINGLE sustainable model is, it does not matter that it is freedom, democracy and free enterprise. The point is that they are declaring there is now only one---and just like the war that this administration is telling us will have no end, this model will now have no end. Just like Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, this manifesto declares an end to history. The very act of making such a statement is numbing to human creativity, suppresses human reason's need for openness and the role of doubt and questioning. And to the degree that this view of national success, whatever "success" means, is touted as the only vision of truth about countries, and how they can succeed, it is a form of totalitarianism. Which is the second perspective I want to present today.

Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist at Yale, wrote a book back in the 60's about the "Cultural Revolution" in Communist China called, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism ; A Study of "Brainwashing" in China. Chapter 22 of Part Four of that book is called "Ideological Totalism" and has for years been used by people studying religious cults. It lists eight psychological themes which predominate in the process of thought reform. I'm going to look at only four.

The first is called Milieu Control. It has to do with controlling communication. The form I want to consider is the control of the media, either by direct censorship, or by censorship exercised by print and electronic journalists on themselves, for fear of losing their jobs. When censorship is being exercised, quoting Lifton, "An individual is deprived of the combination of external information and inner reflection which anyone requires to test the realities of their environment and to maintain a measure of identity separate from it. Instead, when censorship is being exercised, the person] is called upon to make an absolute polarization of the real the prevailing ideology and the unreal everything else. To the extent that a person does this, they undergo a personal closure which frees them from humankind's incessant struggle with the elusive subtleties of truth." It gives me little comfort to know that our executive branch has finally found that freedom; that our media is now free from reporting the nuances, dissent, and complexity of human stories; and that our military has been freed from any consideration that our "enemies" are human, too.

The second psychological theme is called "Mystical Manipulation." Included in it is "a sense of higher purpose,' of having directly perceived some imminent law of social development,' and of being themselves the vanguard of this development. They are the agents chosen by History with a capitol H, by God, or by some other supernatural force to carry out the "mystical imperative," the pursuit of which must supersede all considerations of decency or of immediate human welfare."

Place these statements against that definition, and our present circumstances become clear: President Bush, "You are either for us or against us." Secretary of State, Colin Powell to the House Armed Services Committee about America's role in the world, "I want to be the bully on the block."

The third theme is "The Demand for Purity." Lifton writes: "In all situations of ideological totalism, the experiential world is sharply divided into the pure and the impure, into the absolutely good and the absolutely evil. The good and the pure are of course those ideas, feelings, and actions which are consistent with the totalist ideology and policy; anything else is apt to be relegated to the bad and the impure. The philosophical assumption underlying this demand is that absolute purity is attainable, and that anything done to anyone in the name of this purity is ultimately moral . . . ."

That means anything, anything like going to war on Iraq, like detaining enemy combatants forever, like forcing libraries to disclose information about what citizens have been reading.

The fourth theme I want to speak about is called "Sacred Science." Lifton: "The totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic dogma, holding it out as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence. This sacredness is evident in the prohibition, whether or not explicit, against the questioning of basic assumptions, and in the reverence which is demanded for the originators of the Word, the present bearers of the Word, and the Word itself. The assumption here is not so much that humans can be God, but rather that human's ideas can be God: that an absolute science of ideas exists; that this science can be combined with an equally absolute body of moral principles; and that the resulting doctrine is true for all humankind at all times."

Remember the President's words in the National Security Document: There now is "a single sustainable model" for the nations of the earth.

Which leads to the last perspective I will present. Eqbal Ahmad, in a recent Nation article entitled, "Roots of the Religious Right," in the section of his article called, "Profile of the Religious Right," says that fundamentalist religions share a number of similarities:

The RR, in all countries and times, confronts and demonizes an Other claiming this "Other" as both inferior and threatening.

They create a cult of violence and the proliferation of enemies.

All express their hate for the Other by organized violence. What better definition of war is there than organized violence? All legitimize their violence with references to religion and history. It is well known that AG Ashcroft believes the war on terrorism is a holy war, decreed by God. All such movements share a patriarchal outlook, and to varying degrees discriminate against women. All religio-political parties are inherently undemocratic even when they operate in a democratic framework. . . . they reject basic democratic values---acceptance of pluralism, emphasis on reason as an organizing principle of social and political life, and commitment to the resolution of differences by dialogue.

Nearly all favor a centralist and absolutist structure of governance.

As movements and political parties . . . for power's sake, they make compromises and, when necessary strike Faustian deals vs Deals such as the suppression of civil liberties in the interest of fighting terrorism. Deals such as being willing to go to war without international or UN support. Deals such as depriving thousands of citizens the right to vote by a variety of means, in order to declare election victory. Deals such as refusing to press litigation against malfeasant companies, because it might expose the complicity of members of the administration. And on and on and on.

So this is today's lesson:

We are in danger as a people: Our democracy is in peril both from without AND from within.

The Market is not God: Responding to market signals and behaving morally are two completely different things.

Present political tactics of this executive branch are embedded in both totalitarian and right wing strategies, ideology and theology

A final lesson, implicit, rather than explicit, written by Gore Vidal with sarcastic tongue in cheek: We are now operating on a high metaphysical plane. Religious, even. Good. Evil. Us. Them. Faith. Death.

Where is the hope? First, right here in this room. All of you. Able to question and dissent. Able to take action in defense of your rights, no matter how small that action may be. Second, the sheet on our GA Resolution on Civil Liberties: It is filled with clear sighted arguments and with ideas for action. Third: Well . . . that, I believe, is up to you. Leadership has to emerge, support has to flow to them, actions need to be taken.

We are not helpless. But . . . we and our very world are in danger.

So ends the Rabbinic teaching for the day.

Ashé-Amen-Ameen. Shalom. Blessed Be.
Gracias y Namasté.

What is your reaction to this sermon? Please send comments to Reverend Kurt Kuhwald