Our Freedom Fetish
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This time of year two years ago the New England Patriots were playing the NY Giants in the Superbowl and I was in Boston interviewing for a ministry position. My husband was helping me prepare for the interviews and he took me aside beforehand and said gravely, “Now, this is very important. The search committee might ask you something about the Superbowl. You’re going to need to be able to say (a) what sport they’re talking about, (b) that this involves two teams: one from where you live and one from where they live, and (c) some opinion about which one ought to win, preferably the Patriots.”
So a couple days ago, again, my husband took me aside and said, gravely, “Now Sunday is the Superbowl. I know you’re not going to mention it in your sermon, and that’s fine, but you’re going to need to somehow inform the congregation that at least you’re aware that there’s a big football game happening basically in our backyard this afternoon.” Consider yourselves so informed herewith. And now, on to my sermon.
I recently told a story about Mayim Bialik, the TV actor who adheres to Jewish modesty laws in what she wears onscreen and off. Her clothes have to cover her elbows, knees, and collarbone. She has struggled publicly with how to pull this off in the glitzy, sexy Hollywood world, especially when it comes to finding a dress to wear to the Emmys. Those of you who were here when I talked about this may remember that she called the quest to find this dress “Operation Hot and Holy.”
While Mayim Bialik’s story is charming in some ways, I’m guessing that some of us may have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, here’s this brave, really smart (PhD-in-neuroscience-from-UCLA smart), confident, modern woman who’s standing up for her beliefs in a countercultural way, which is the point I was making in that sermon. On the other hand, here’s this brave, really smart, confident, modern woman who’s submitting herself to this sexist, archaic set of rules invented by a bunch of men in the Middle Ages. The notion of “modesty” for women belongs entirely to patriarchy, doesn’t it? Surely it can’t be good for women or feminism to have such a public figure legitimating it. Or so an argument might go.
Feminism and liberal movements in general are often associated with personal freedom. Freedom from dogmas, freedom from strictures and rules, freedom from outdated religious and cultural norms. The 60’s and 70’s were all about this movement toward freedom. If it feels good, do it. Sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. It was a youth culture that scorned tradition. Women embraced a kind of freedom we had never seen before and clothing became emblematic of that freedom – burning bras, exposing lots of skin, celebrating our sexuality instead of condemning it. Free to be you and me.
This was a vital step forward for our culture and it carried with it real advances for women as well as for people of color and LGBT people. But sadly, I think, what was liberation for one generation became, in some ways, oppression for the next. As traditional religious laws and social norms lost their grip on our culture, they left a power vacuum. Capitalism rushed in to fill it. I don’t need to tell you (but I will anyway) about how every newsstand, web medium, and TV show now blares images of today’s “models.” Airbrushed women wearing almost nothing with body types that almost no one actually has. These women’s sex appeal is what’s important about them and they are, in some form or other, always for sale. And now girls as young as 6 are anxious about how their bodies look and 9 and 10-year-olds are dieting. Not just a few of them: 40% of them. Eating disorders have been on the rise every year since 1930. And the plastic surgery industry is booming. Meanwhile women still occupy only meager percentages of congressional seats and executive offices.
Is this the fulfillment of the dream of the empowerment and sexual liberation of women? At the end of the long, bloodstained road of struggle for women’s freedom and dignity through the generations, is the great shining beacon really Miley Cyrus? If you ask her, probably yes. Her song “I Can’t Stop” (telling title) says it all.
“It’s our party we can do what we want
It’s our party we can say what we want
It’s our party we can love who we want
We can kiss who we want
We can sing what we want”
And there she was at the VMA’s this summer illustrating the point: singing that song, gyrating, twerking, basically naked and emaciated, masturbating on stage. She cynically uses black women’s bodies as props. She’s wearing a princess bathing suit (until she takes it off) and she’s surrounded by giant teddy bears, sardonically mocking the innocence of childhood. And all those 9-year-olds are watching on TV. It all smacks of a kind of famished desperation. Nothing is sacred. Everything and everyone is instrumental; all is sacrificed to the giant engine, the entertainment industry machine that requires the performer to shock and arouse and sell, sell, sell. Or else the marketplace will vomit you out. This is freedom, right? “It’s our party, we can do what we want.”
So exhibit A, you have Mayim Bialik. Exhibit B, Miley Cyrus. Two opposite ends of the “modesty” continuum. Mayim Bialik would probably describe her wardrobe choices as obedience to a force and a law greater than herself. Miley Cyrus might describe hers as an exercise of freedom. But I would say that the reality is exactly the opposite. Mayim Bialik is exercising freedom from the powerful social pressures of her day, drawing strength and dignity from the teachings of her religious tradition. Miley Cyrus is submitting to a force and law greater than herself, obediently reproducing an image of female sexuality constructed by mass culture, selling everything she has, retaining nothing. And she, in her own words, “can’t stop.”
This issue of women’s clothing and sexuality is just one example of a much larger phenomenon. The old regimes of religious tradition have left a power vacuum and there is a new regime in town that is just as coercive. I would say it’s even more coercive because it’s unspoken. It’s silent. It’s invisible. It pervades everything and it masquerades as freedom.
So what does this all have to do with Unitarian Universalists? Probably none of us in this room is in danger of becoming either Mayim Bialik or Miley Cyrus. We like to think that we’ve reached a kind of enlightened, reasonable middle ground. That we are neither bound by the strictures of history nor cheapened by the excesses of modernity. We are, in the words of our Seven Principles, both “free and responsible.”
But you have to admit, we do have a thing for freedom. Culturally, Unitarian Universalists and liberal religious folks in general are enchanted, enthralled with our freedom. It was the defining feature of our historical journey from Catholicism to Protestantism to liberal Protestantism to Unitarianism and Universalism. Each generation of believers shrugged off a layer of religious doctrines and practices that felt oppressive. We shrugged off layer after layer of religious obligation until, when there were no obligations left to reject, the foe became the notion of obligation itself. Obligation itself. Nobody tells us what to do. It’s our party, we can do what we want.
Here’s a story to illustrate the point: In that interview in Boston, the search committee had asked me to lead them in an exercise. Any exercise I wanted. So I asked them to imagine a tight-knit community of “really religious, really observant Unitarian Universalists.” I asked them to envision what foods members of this hypothetical community would eat, what they would wear, how they would raise their children, and how they would spend their time and money. What practices would be required? What would be prohibited? Category by category, the response was the same: nothing would be required, nothing prohibited.
I challenged them: No foods would be prohibited for the most religious Unitarian Universalists? Not even foods grown by child laborers for slave wages? Not even foods made through extreme cruelty to animals? Not even foods whose manufacturing pollutes rivers and oceans, damaging the interconnected web of life? Nothing prohibited? The response they gave was that while people in this hypothetical really religious community would be naturally inclined to, for example, avoid such foods, there would be no community-wide laws guiding their practices. People would usually opt to do the right thing presumably because they would be good people who always try to do the right thing within reason.
Whether or not good people left to their own devices generally do the right thing is a debate for another time. Suffice it to say for now that religious traditions have developed detailed ethical commandments precisely because doing the right thing consistently is hard. Because sometimes we don’t want to. Sometimes we don’t want to be loving, we don’t feel like being compassionate, we don’t care about dignity, and we’d rather not be honest. But clearly, to this particular group of Boston liberals, what people do with their freedom of choice is less important than that they have this freedom. Sure, they value community and social justice and caring for the earth, but freedom is a higher value still. I expressed my disagreement with the search committee’s hierarchy of priorities and the rest is history. (And, by the way, the Patriots lost the Superbowl that year and the NY Giants won. I’m just saying.)
Now there’s nothing wrong with freedom. Freedom in and of itself is neutral. It can be a beautiful and powerful thing. But to say that freedom is our highest value as religious people is to impoverish our faith and ourselves. You can’t hold a community together only by a shared commitment to personal autonomy. If everyone is reinventing the wheel, we won’t get any traction. We have other values. Like love; like justice; like compassion; like dignity; like honestly. Like our Seven Principles. And, sorry to say, our ability to advance those values in the world sometimes conflicts with personal freedom. I’m sure Mayim Bialik would enjoy the freedom to wear what she wants to the Emmys, but her spiritual values are more important to her still. And as a mother, she knows that the 9-year-olds are watching.
The scary thing is that sometimes we don’t even know what freedom is. Sometimes, like Miley Cyrus, what we think of as an exercise of freedom is no more than subservience to the powerful cultural norms of our day. Our desires and insecurities fueled by the media; corporate interests so shrewd, they reach into the depths of who we are. And we can wind up demeaned by the very things we think empower us.
So maybe we’re really talking about two different kinds of freedom here – freedom with a lower-case “f,” Miley Cyrus style: “It’s our party we can do what we want.” And Freedom with an upper case “F,” Mayim Bialik style. The Freedom to live our lives with integrity, regardless of the social pressures upon us. It’s the embrace of our values and traditions within a community of accountability. It’s the paradoxical practice of empowering ourselves by limiting ourselves; of gaining by relinquishing.
Because we know as Unitarian Universalists that it’s not just “our” party, it’s everyone’s party. We are all interconnected and our actions have consequences way beyond what we can foresee. We are not isolated beings; we are part of the stream of history, connected with a heritage and pointing meaningfully toward the future. The 9-year-olds are watching and we are all on stage in front of them. So let’s model what it takes to strengthen our selfhood and deepen our dignity. Let’s be intentional and reverent in our choices. Let’s build real community together. And be ever so careful about what rushes into the power vacuum left by the traditions and strictures we reject.
