WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED? II:
THE CHALLENGES OF OUR TIMES
A Sermon by Kenneth W. Phifer, Delivered at First UU Church, Ann Arbor, 
9/19/04

 
Our times—this moment-- are and always will be the most important times. 
As Herbert Muller has observed, “the present is holy ground.” We can only 
remember the past, not live in it. We can only plan for the future, not dwell 
in it.

In the present, we can redeem the past or betray it. In the present, we can 
make wise preparations for the future or evade our responsibility so that our 
children and grandchildren have to bear our burdens.

The brute fact of our times, made grimly clear in 9/11, is that we live in a 
global society. It was not just Americans who died on that day. People from 
86 countries were in the World Trade Center and perished or were wounded.

The whole world mourned the death and destruction of that day, just as the 
whole world mourned the death and destruction at a school in Beslan a few 
days ago.

The terrorist networks responsible for these terrible deeds had and have ties 
to groups in many countries. The financing of their operations is done 
through a variety of international banking and fund-raising arrangements. 
The search for these people and the effort to destroy them involves tens of 
nations.

The war in Afghanistan was and is being fought under United Nations 
auspices with troops from many nations and support from virtually every 
country in the world.

The war in Iraq was debated by the United Nations. It remains a focus of 
multi-national cooperation, multi-national anger, and multi-national concern.

9/11 made clear that there is only one world on this earth. Beslan reinforced 
that lesson. What happens in one place is important to people everywhere. 
We are connected, for good or for ill.

There was an amusing expression of this that recently made the e-mail 
rounds.

“Question: What is the truest definition of globalization?
Answer: Princess Diana’s death.
Question: How come?
Answer: An English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend crashes in a French 
tunnel riding in a German car with a Dutch engine driven by a Belgian who 
was drunk on Scottish whisky, followed closely by Italian paparazzi on 
Japanese motorcycles; she was treated by an American doctor using 
Brazilian medicines.
The computer on which you are reading this probably uses Taiwanese chips 
and a Korean monitor; it was assembled by Bangladeshi workers in a 
Singapore plant, transported by Indian lorry-drivers, hijacked by 
Indonesians, unloaded by Sicilian longshoremen and trucked to you by 
Mexican illegals munching on grapes from Peru and drinking coffee from 
Colombia…”

Globalization means that our actions have a much wider influence than just 
within our region or nation. Globalization means that we must have strong 
and respectful ties with one another if we are to confront our challenges 
successfully. Globalization means that the United Nations and its many 
agencies and arms have a new significance. Dwight Eisenhower was surely 
right when he called the UN and all it symbolizes the last best hope of 
humanity. 

What then are the challenges that we face in this global age?

The first area of concern is the wider context of nature and society within 
which all people live on this planet.

One of the critical issues we face is how to live in harmony on our home. 
Until a century ago, with a few exceptions among the indigenous peoples of 
the earth, human beings have mostly not paid any attention to the impact we 
have had on the planet. Mostly we thought the planet was too big, too clever 
at renewing itself, or too much beyond our control for us to worry about it. 

Some in the western world have used the first chapter of Genesis as a 
justification for doing whatever they wanted, pointing to the fact that God 
there gives to the newly created man and woman “dominion” over the earth 
and all that is on it. 

Over the last 100 years, many have come to recognize how dangerous this 
attitude is. Thousands of species have become extinct because of it. The 
arable land available has shrunk to dangerous lows in a time of rising 
population because of this attitude. Global warming has become a grave 
threat to the whole earth because of it.

The current issue of the National Geographic points out that “from Alaska to 
the snowy peaks of the Andes the world is heating up right now, and fast. 
Globally, the temperature is up 1 degree F over the past century, but some of 
the coldest, most remote spots have warmed up much more. The results 
aren’t pretty. Ice is melting, rivers are running dry, and coasts are eroding, 
threatening communities. Flora and fauna are feeling the heat too…These 
aren’t projections; they are facts on the ground…omens of what’s in store 
for the planet.”

The clearing of the rain forests, the polluting of our skies and waters, and 
our addictive consumption of fossil fuels all contribute to a very dangerous 
situation for the earth, and thus for all of us who live on it.

Every one on earth faces the challenge of learning how to live wisely with 
the land and the water and the sky, the animals and plants for whom earth is 
also home.

A second aspect of the wider context in which we live is economic. How 
should the wealth of the world be distributed? How do we create enough 
jobs for everyone to have good work? What portion of our income should be 
devoted to the common good through taxation? Is there an economic system 
that is both productive and fair? 

These are questions that people around the globe are struggling with. 
Because of the rise of multi-national corporations, we must pay attention to 
how these questions are answered not just in our land but in all lands. Many 
of our foods and clothes and cars and computers and toys, etc., etc., etc. are 
made elsewhere. Often when we call a company for a product or service, we 
will speak to someone not in Indiana but in India. 

The answers in our own land have so far not been reassuring. A recent report 
by the Commerce Department noted that over the past three years wage and 
salary growth have been very poor while profits have been “unusually 
robust.” The Labor Day headline in the Ann Arbor News was “Dismal Labor 
Day For Jobs.” 

A study by the New York Times spoke of a huge change in the nature of 
work in America, with job security a thing of the past. Where once people 
might hold one or two or at most three jobs in a lifetime, today the 
expectation is realistically 11 different jobs. Many people work to the virtual 
exclusion of everything else, carrying cell phones wherever they go, using 
home computers to finish up office work, and living in fear that the next 
cadre of people laid off will include them. The stress associated with the 
new work climate has increased the number of illnesses, the number of sick 
days, and the number of people forced to quit working because of chronic 
conditions.

Of equal concern is the rising use of credit to pay for things. The 
government has taken on staggering annual debts because of the tax cuts. 
Individuals have followed suit so that the total debt load in America has 
doubled in the past ten years. Somebody is going to have to pay all those 
debts.

That is the point that Pete Peterson, in his stark account of the American 
economic scene, RUNNING ON EMPTY, makes so forcefully. By 
eliminating huge revenues from higher income people through tax cuts and 
by continuing to spend, the government is dumping an impossible financial 
burden on our children and grandchildren.

Peterson, Commerce Secretary under President Nixon and the founder with 
Democrat Paul Tsongas of the trans-partisan Concord Coalition, is outraged 
at the radical policies of the present administration, and of Republican and 
Democratic administrations dating back 30 years. 

Peterson wants a fair tax system, which means that everybody pays, 
corporations and rich people alike, and everybody pays a fair share. That is 
exactly what we ask members and friends of this congregation to do in our 
annual pledge drive—pay a fair share. That is not the way the present tax 
system works, nor is it in the plans for the future. 

Glenn Hubbard, a supporter of the present policies and trends, argues that a 
progressive income tax “discourages entrepreneurship and risk-taking. We 
have to trade off our interest in fairness with those costs. I, like many 
conservative economists, care a lot about progressivity at the bottom…But 
progressivity at the top? That just sounds like envy to me.”

Economic arrangements are at the heart of a just society. Figuring out what 
really is fair is a major challenge of our times.

So is a third question that confronts the world at this time—what kind of 
governing system is best? Are there many different kinds that can work or 
only one? We face that question in both Afghanistan and Iraq. We face that 
same question with regard to many nations in the world whose power 
arrangements are clearly not like ours. 

I admit to a strong preference for and belief in democratic systems. I 
question whether such systems really are workable everywhere. I question 
because history seems to make it clear that they are not. I question because 
even in our own land I wonder if democracy is working.

The role of money, of lobbyists, of special interests in manipulating and 
directing the course of legislation and executive action in Washington is well 
known. Remember: one or the other of two very rich white guys will be 
sworn in as the president next January.

How many people voted in the election this past week? How many voted in 
the school board election three months ago? How many will vote in 
November? The pitiful numbers of people who actually vote suggest either a 
dangerous indifference to the issues and the people running for office or an 
even more dangerous despair about votes mattering at all.

The deadline for voter registration this year is October 4.

I worry also about the lack of a fully developed sense of the common good 
in this land. Robert Bellah, in his studies over the past several decades 
(HABITS OF THE HEART, THE GOOD SOCIETY, etc.) has made clear 
how hard it is for Americans to think communally. Our heritage is one of 
Don’t Tread On Me, the motto on one of the most popular Colonial flags. 
Ayn Rand, in her celebration of the ego, ANTHEM, and in her other books 
in praise of the individual, touched a deep chord in the American psyche. 

Can we survive as a nation if we do not learn to think communally, to think 
about the common good, to think about institutions and systems that help us 
all, to think with pride about paying taxes, to think about the moral worth of 
guarantees that when bad things happen to us our society will be sure that 
we are all right?

Democracy, economics, and the environment are three deeply urgent 
challenges confronting our land and all lands on the earth in this new age of 
globalization.

A second broad category of concern is religion, the human spirit in its search 
for meaning and purpose and goodness.

The religions of the world have failed quite dramatically to address this need 
over the last century and more. That failure is shown by the large number of 
people today who will have nothing to do with organized religion, easily a 
majority in our country and around the world.

That failure is shown by the large number of people who are sunk in one 
form of despair or another, ranging from addictive drug and alcohol use to 
abusive behaviour to a hopelessness that prevents them from enjoying life at 
all. 

That failure is shown by the large number of people in various religions who 
use those religions as a club with which to beat other people, most 
dramatically demonstrated by the violence to which some of these 
fundamentalists have resorted: Buddhists in Tokyo, Jews in Israel and 
Palestine, Hindus in India, Muslims in the Middle East, Europe and 
America, and Christians in this land. 

The FUNDAMENTALISM PROJECT  (five volumes) made clear that 
religion in general and all religions in particular are suffused with the 
distorted attitude of Do It My Way/ Believe My Doctrines Or I Will Kill 
You.

Karen Armstrong’s HOLY WAR shows the roots of religiously justified 
violence in the three western monotheistic religions. Mark Juergensmayer 
described the global rise of religious violence in the last several decades in 
his TERROR IN THE MIND OF GOD. 

Numerous studies have made clear, and many leaders of the various world 
religions have admitted to this, that most of the wars and no small amount of 
the violence in human life is religiously justified if not religiously inspired.

The religions of the world, and those of us who are religious leaders, have a 
responsibility to promote peaceful and just living, to turn away from 
violence and hatred, to encourage at least toleration and where possible 
genuine tolerance in which we learn from and share with each other.

In a world with as many dangerous weapons as we have and as closely 
interconnected as we are, no role of religion could be more important than 
this one.

Violence is one part of the religious problem of our times, materialism is the 
other. Wendell Berry, in his splendidly angry book, CITIZENSHIP 
PAPERS, observes that part of the “crisis of the modern world…is a 
confusion between needs and wants.” Against a materialistically wealthy 
society that encourages us to think of wants as needs—how else can a 
consumer-oriented economy survive?—religion has had but a weak voice. 

But as so many learn the hard way, “the best things in life aren’t things.” 
Joanna Davis wrote a book with that title after mulling over the admonition 
of the president right after 9/11 to go shopping. She saw that slogan on a 
bumper and decided to write about it, because that seemed to speak the truth 
to her. 

“Life,” she wrote,” isn’t about what we acquire and own. It is a spiritual 
exercise rooted in virtue, principle, experience, community, and faith. It is a 
loving collaboration involving our family, friends, and dearest intimates. It is 
about the glory and beauty of the natural world in its infinite variety.”

Antoine de Saint Exupery said it this way: “We live not by things but by the 
meanings of things.”

The challenge to religion is to teach and practice a life of peace and justice, a 
life of spiritual richness and joy, a life of such strength and purpose that the 
messages of violence and materialism no longer play very important roles
in human affairs.

We face serious challenges in our personal lives as well, especially in our 
families.

The intimate family is in crisis. Perhaps the family is always in crisis. 
Perhaps the fact that we do not really have a settled definition of what the 
family is accounts for this, because no one disputes the importance of family 
for our well being. We need a home, and that is where our family is.

Contrary to what the people pushing for a so-called marriage amendment in 
Michigan and at the federal level think, the facts are clear that the meaning 
of marriage, and thus of family, is not commonly one man and one woman 
plus their children and relatives.

George Peter Murdock, an anthropological systematizer,  noted that of the 
849 societies in the ethnographic record of human history, monogamy—one 
man, one woman--was characteristic of 137 or 16% of them. The most 
common form of family construction is polygyny, that is, one man with two 
or more women. 

In our divided land, there are many forms of family: heterosexual couples, 
lesbian and gay couples, committed polyamorous families, single parents, 
multi-generational households, men and women who have chosen the single 
life, and many others. 

Part of the challenge of our times is to recognize the already existing 
diversity of families, and to provide legal status and societal support equal to 
that of heterosexual couples for all forms of family where the people 
involved desire it. The result will be stronger families, happier children, and 
a healthier society.

Vermont’s groundbreaking civil union legislation and Massachusetts’ 
welcome of gay and lesbian couples into legal marriage beginning last May 
are important steps in that direction.

(Incidentally, I am proud of the fact that the ceremony for the first same sex 
couple married in Massachusetts was performed by the president of the 
Unitarian Universalist Association, Bill Sinkford.)

Family is about intimate bonding, but it also refers to the larger community 
of our nation. No issue is of greater urgency to our national family than race.

The so-called red people, resident on this continent for at least millennia, 
were treated by the white Europeans who invaded their land as an 
impediment to white settlement. Indians were regarded as savages, as 
uncivilized, as unworthy of living side by side with Christian folk. Their 
land was stolen from them. Their sacred traditions mocked. When all else 
failed, hideous tactics—like the scorched earth policies of George 
Washington in the late 18th century—were employed to force the tribes to 
relocate—until there was no place left to which they could go.

These criminal acts have never been adequately recognized much less  
recompensed. If the family of America is to be reconciled, we must come to 
terms with what has been done and work towards a way of atoning for our 
wicked deeds.

The other major group that has suffered at the hands of white intruders into 
this continent are the Africans brought here against their will and their 
descendants who lived in slavery until January 1, 1863. Conditions have 
improved since then, no question about that. Roger Wilkins, a descendant of 
some of those brought here in chains, makes clear that not enough has been 
done.

In his most recent book, JEFFERSON’S PILLOW: THE FOUNDING 
FATHERS AND THE DILEMMA OF BLACK NATIONALISM, Wilkins 
writes “ ‘Our nation’! I would not have used those words before I began 
research for this book.. I might have written then,   ‘the United States,’ but 
there had been too much pushing me aside by whites—many of whose 
families had immigrated in the nineteenth century or later—with the claim 
that America was, first of all, theirs. And there had been too much 
appropriation of the flag and other symbols of patriotism in the service of the 
rankest bigotry for me to embrace either the nation or its symbols.”

I presume that most if not all black people could identify with those words. 
The grim history of what whites have done to blacks is full of sadness and 
cruelty and terrible injustices. It is a history that white people have been 
willing to face only reluctantly, only sporadically, and only some of us some 
of the time.

It is important for our national family that more concerted efforts be made, 
deeper understandings developed, and ways of compensating be found in 
order to heal the racial wounds of our American community. That 
conversation began in this congregation last January and will continue.

One other assault on the life of intimate families and our national family is 
the shameful system of health care in our land. The Institute of Medicine 
study chaired by University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman made 
that point: too many people—an estimated 75 million—have little or no 
health insurance. Children and their parents go without care or receive too 
little care because as a society we have chosen to ration our health care by 
the standard of money or employment. 

At some point poor health catches up to people and at some point all of 
society pays the price for excluding so many from full care, from education 
to check-ups and vaccinations to prenatal care to good diagnoses to sound 
treatment. 

It is disgraceful that the richest country in the world, with arguably the best 
doctors and nurses and technical equipment, operates a health care system  
in which profit plays such a determinative role. I think more highly of the 
people I know working in health care fields than to believe than only money 
can inspire them to do the very best they can to prevent and treat disease.

Two weeks from tonight Dr. Andrew Zweifler will deliver the Klein Lecture 
about health care. Because he knows a lot more about this subject than I do, 
I will defer further comment and  encourage your attendance. 

The challenges faced by families are of at least three kinds: the legal and 
societal support needed by families of every kind, the long-standing issues 
of race that rightly disturb our national psyche, and the scandal of our health 
care system.

The environment, economics, and democracy confront the whole world   
with serious problems that we cannot ignore.

Religion must speak with clearer voice for a meaningful existence that does 
not rely on either violence or materialism.

Our families are in danger and need more loving care so that all families are 
respected and welcomed, racial tensions are dealt with, and health care is 
provided equitably for every one.

I believe our faith is well situated to confront these challenges. We are a 
faith that calls on people to use the inner strength they have, usually 
considerably greater than we realize till we use it. 

We are a faith whose emphasis on individualism is embedded within a 
caring community. We are not alone in our efforts.

Ours is a faith that enables us to change when we have to. We are non-
dogmatic and we insist on honesty, the truth as well as we can know it. We 
do not see truth as a past event or declaration so much as a unfolding 
revelation, from the past, in the present, moving into the future.

Our faith calls on us to act, even when we do not know everything, even 
when we are uncertain, even when the odds are against us. Our faith says to 
do the best we can and trust that in time goodness and justice, peace and 
harmony will prevail.

That’s a great faith with which to confront the challenges of our times!



Copyright 2004, Kenneth W. Phifer, All Rights Reserved.





                                          











                                         BIBLIOGRAPHY

1.	THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT: FINAL REPORT OF THE 
NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON 
THE UNITED STATES, AUTHORIZED EDITION, W.W. Norton 
and Company, 2004.
2.	Wendell Berry, CITIZENSHIP PAPERS, Shoemaker and Hoard, 
2003.
3.	Mark Juergensmeyer, TERROR IN THE MIND OF GOD: THE 
GLOBAL RISE OF RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE, University of 
California Press, 2001.
4.	Melvin Konnor, THE TANGLED WING: BIOLOGICAL 
CONSTRAINTS ON THE HUMAN SPIRIT, Holt, Rinehart, and 
Winston, 1982. 
5.	William R. Murry, A FAITH FOR ALL SEASONS: LIBERAL 
RELIGION AND THE CRISES OF LIFE, River Road Press, 1990.
6.	Peter G. Peterson, RUNNING ON EMPTY: HOW THE 
DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN PARTIES ARE 
BANKRUPTING OUR FUTURE AND WHAT AMERICANS CAN 
DO ABOUT IT, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2004.
7.	Kevin Phillips, WEALTH AND DEMOCRACY: A POLITICAL 
HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN RICH, Broadway Books, 2002.
8.	Lynne Truss, EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES: THE ZERO 
TOLERANCE APPROACH TO PUNCTUATION, Gotham books, 
2004.
9.	Roger Wilkins, JEFFERSON’S PILLOW: THE FOUNDING 
FATHERS AND THE DILEMMA OF BLACK PATRIOTISM, 
Beacon Press, 2002.











 


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