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Dr. Robin Meyers' Speech to students at OK University
As some of you know, I am minister of Mayflower
Congregational Church in Oklahoma City, an Open and
Affirming, Peace and Justice church in northwest
Oklahoma City, and professor of Rhetoric at Oklahoma
City University. But you would most likely have
encountered me on the pages of the Oklahoma Gazette,
where I have been a columnist for six years, and hold
the record for the most number of angry letters to the
editor.
Tonight, I join ranks of those who are angry,
because I have watched as the faith I love has been
taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for
Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian.
We've heard a lot lately about so-called "moral
values" as having swung the election to President
Bush. Well, I'm a great believer in moral values, but
we need to have a discussion, all over this country,
about exactly what constitutes a moral value -- I mean
what are we talking about? Because we don't get to
make them up as we go along, especially not if we are
people of faith. We have an inherited tradition of
what is right and wrong, and moral is as moral does.
Let me give you just a few of the reasons why I
take issue with those in power who claim moral values
are on their side:
1. When you start a war on false pretenses, and
then act as if your deceptions are justified because
you are doing God's will, and that your critics are
either unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are some
of us who have given our lives to teaching and
preaching the faith who believe that this is not only
not moral, but immoral.
2. When you live in a country that has
established international rules for waging a just war,
build the United Nations on your own soil to enforce
them, and then arrogantly break the very rules you set
down for the rest of the world, you are doing
something immoral.
3. When you claim that Jesus is the Lord of your
life, and yet fail to acknowledge that your policies
ignore his essential teaching, or turn them on their
head (you know, Sermon on the Mount stuff like that we
must never return violence for violence and that those
who live by the sword will die by the sword), you are
doing something immoral.
4. When you act as if the lives of Iraqi
civilians are not as important as the lives of
American soldiers, and refuse to even count them, you
are doing something immoral.
5. When you find a way to avoid combat in
Vietnam, and then question the patriotism of someone
who volunteered to fight, and came home a hero, you
are doing something immoral.
6. When you ignore the fundamental teachings of
the gospel, which says that the way the strong treat
the weak is the ultimate ethical test, by giving tax
breaks to the wealthiest among us so the strong will
get stronger and the weak will get weaker, you are
doing something immoral.
7. When you wink at the torture of prisoners,
and deprive so-called "enemy combatants" of the rules
of the Geneva convention, which your own country
helped to establish and insists that other countries
follow, you are doing something immoral.
8. When you claim that the world can be divided
up into the good guys and the evil doers, slice up
your own nation into those who are with you, or with
the terrorists -- and then launch a war which enriches
your own friends and seizes control of the oil to
which we are addicted, instead of helping us to
kick the habit, you are doing something immoral.
9. When you fail to veto a single spending bill,
but ask us to pay for a war with no exit strategy and
no end in sight, creating an enormous deficit that
hangs like a great millstone around the necks of our
children, you are doing something immoral.
10. When you cause most of the rest of the world
to hate a country that was once the most loved country
in the world, and act like it doesn't matter what
others think of us, only what God thinks of you, you
have done something immoral.
11. When you use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge
issue to turn out record numbers of evangelical
voters, and use the Constitution as a tool of
discrimination, you are doing something immoral.
12. When you favor the death penalty, and yet
claim to be a follower of Jesus, who said an eye for
an eye was the old way, not the way of the kingdom,
you are doing something immoral.
13. When you dismantle countless environmental
laws designed to protect the earth which is God's gift
to us all, so that the corporations that bought you
and paid for your favors will make higher profits
while our children breathe dirty air and live in a
toxic world, you have done something immoral. The
earth belongs to the Lord, not Halliburton.
14. When you claim that our God is bigger than
their God, and that our killing is righteous, while
theirs is evil, we have begun to resemble the enemy we
claim to be fighting, and that is immoral. We have met
the enemy, and the enemy is us.
15. When you tell people that you intend to run
and govern as a "compassionate conservative," using
the word which is the essence of all religious
faith-compassion, and then show no compassion for
anyone who disagrees with you, and no patience with
those who cry to you for help, you are doing something
immoral.
16. When you talk about Jesus constantly, who
was a healer of the sick, but do nothing to make sure
that anyone who is sick can go to see a doctor, even
if she doesn't have a penny in her pocket, you are
doing something immoral.
17. When you put judges on the bench who are
racist, and will set women back a hundred years, and
when you surround yourself with preachers who say gays
ought to be killed, you are doing something immoral.
I'm tired of people thinking that because I'm a
Christian, I must be a supporter of President Bush, or
that because I favor civil rights and gay rights I
must not be a person of faith. I'm tired of people
saying that I can't support the troops but oppose the
war.
I heard that when I was your age--when the Vietnam
war was raging. We knew that war was wrong, and you
know that this war is wrong--the only question is how
many people are going to die before these make-believe
Christians are removed from power?
This country is bankrupt. The war is morally
bankrupt. The claim of this administration to be
Christian is bankrupt. And the only people who can
turn things around are people like you--young people
who are just beginning to wake up to what is happening
to them. It's your country to take back. It's your
faith to take back.
It's your future to take back.
Don't be afraid to speak out. Don't back down when
your friends begin to tell you that the cause is
righteous and that the flag should be wrapped around
the cross, while the rest of us keep our mouths shut.\
Real Christians take chances for peace. So do real
Jews, and real Muslims, and real Hindus, and real
Buddhists--so do all the faith traditions of the
world at their heart believe one thing: life is
precious.
Every human being is precious. Arrogance is the
opposite of faith. Greed is the opposite of charity.
And believing that one has never made a mistake is the
mark of a deluded man, not a man of faith.
And war -- war is the greatest failure of the
human race -- and thus the greatest failure of faith.
There's an old rock and roll song, whose lyrics say it
all: War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
And what is the dream of the prophets? That we
should study war no more, that we should beat our
swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning
hooks. Who would Jesus bomb, indeed? How many wars
does it take to know that too many people have died?
What if they gave a war and nobody came? Maybe one
day we will find out.
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