We’re gathered in the memory and spirit of activist and organizer Umar Hakim-Dey. I was in a small group with Umar once. He wanted to begin with what we agreed on already. Let’s follow his example. Today’s speakers and audience express many faiths. We have our doctrines and differences and histories of holy wars. But we agree on one thing, and that’s the golden rule. The golden rule teaches that we do to others only what we would have them do to us.
As an Abrahamic practitioner, my faith is that God wrote this law on my heart. I remember Jesus saying that every word of the Bible he inherited added up to the golden rule. But we didn’t invent it. We have the golden rule from Confucius, 500 years before Christ. If I were a secular philosopher, I would find my way to the golden rule without reference to faith. As an evolutionarily biologist, I would suspect that it was written in our DNA. As an astrophysicist, I might see the universe suspended in exquisite balance and mutuality because of the golden rule, present at the beginning of all things.
The golden rule says that we always think of the impact of our actions on our neighbor. Even when protecting ourselves, we do no harm we don’t have to do. We never engage in cruelty for cruelty’s sake. Without the golden rule, we can’t have a happy home or survive five minutes on the 405 during rush hour. It’s the divine law of the universe. It’s the only thing that works. It applies to everyone and everything – except, until now, our politicians and national leaders, who wield the power of life and death over creation.
The golden rule has always ruled out cruelty for cruelty’s sake. And yet this government makes a whole religion out of cruelty. It has killed 130 men of color on the high seas without cause or due process, including those floating helplessly in the wreckage, begging to be saved. It kills peaceful demonstrators and tries to evade accountability. It sends our volunteers into an illegal, unnecessary, stupid war. It brags about jettisoning rules of engagement in wartime. It makes a joke out of torpedoing an Iranian frigate carrying a military band that threatened no one. It bombs a girls’ school and lies about it.
Borrowing the words of the Johnny Cash song, they’re killing people just to watch them die.
In the face of these outrages, Umar’s spirit is asking us what we agree on. The golden rule is a low bar. It is neither Democratic nor Republican, neither liberal nor conservative. We can have secure borders without official cruelty. We can police our neighborhoods without cruelty. We can protect our national interests and interdict drugs without cruelty. We can deepen our understanding of our trans and non-binary neighbors while in the meantime never cruelly denying their humanity.
You might say that even an abstract policy can be cruel. A tax or budget cut can be cruel. But you understand the distinction I’m making. Those in power are intentionally desensitizing us to sadistic acts of state violence, especially against people of color. They fear they can’t stay in power without it.
Our work, in the practical spirit of Umar, is putting them out of power. We have tens of millions of people of faith in our region and 160 million in our country. They need to be organized around the universal law of love.
Many of us grew up with golden rule posters on classroom walls. We all have it in our hearts. We know the instant we’ve done something we shouldn’t do. If good and faithful people look at what’s going on in our country and think it’s okay for power to do what it shouldn’t do, it’s because false teachers have seduced them into thinking that the golden rule can be applied selectively. That’s where faith leaders and teachers come in. You can believe what you want about politics. But when it comes to official cruelty, the golden rule has no exceptions, amendments, exclusions, or codicils.
We sometimes debate about whether events such as this and the organizations that host them are interfaith or multifaith. My friends, we are all-faith. Missing from public life today is a distinct, unified expression of our core principles.
So I propose that we need an All-Faith Democratic Union. Its vision statement would be to hold power accountable to the golden rule to the extent that it rules out acts of unnecessary violence and cruelty for cruelty’s sake. Its mission would be to identify politicians who are in violation, organize against them, crush them peacefully at the polls, and send them home to see if they can learn some manners.
If anyone suggests this violates the separation of church and state, they’re wrong. The establishment clause of the First Amendment protects people from their government, not an indecent government from the decent values of the people.
When we’re hesitant about stepping into the public square, it is usually because we’re being diplomatic and cautious. The age of Trump is no time for diplomacy and caution. We’re being escorted step by step toward the gates of hell. For heaven’s sake, it’s time to stand in the breach in the name of the universal law of love.
[My welcoming remarks and album from “A Multi-Faith Response to Our Current Constitutional Crisis” on Wednesday morning at St. Paul’s Commons, Echo Park. Other speakers were Dr. Lo Sprague of the The Guibord Center; Salam al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council; former White House official Connie Rice of the Advancement Project; Mike Downing, former LAPD deputy and interim chief; the ACLU’s Victor Leung; Nirinjan Singh Khalsa of the California Sikh Council; Rabbi Susan Goldberg of Nefesh; the Rev. Kirkpatrick Tyler, Parks Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church; and Jacquelyn Dupont-walker, director, A.M.E. Social Action Commission.]
