Right and Left Together
What Religious Liberals and Conservatives Have in Common

a sermon delivered at the Unitarian Church of Quincy , Illinois November 12, 2006
by Doug Muder

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Religious liberals and conservatives alike feel that America is slipping away from them because it actually is. This other religion, which is neither liberal nor conservative nor even moderate, is actually in control.

Now, I understand that it’s hard to take this argument seriously. I seem to be talking about some kind of consumer hedonism, and surely it’s just a metaphor to call that a religion. There is, after all, no Church of Consumer Hedonism in Quincy or anyplace else, no place where people are getting together this morning to celebrate the superficial life and preach the Consumer Hedonist theology. Because there is no Consumer Hedonist theology or theory of the afterlife or anything. There is no clergy, no membership list, no newsletter, no committees or any of the other trappings that all others religions have.

So it’s tempting, when we talk about religion, to leave Consumer Hedonism out. Later on I’ll describe the problem that causes, but before I get to that, I need to explain why it makes sense to call Consumer Hedonism a religion at all.

I think the reason Consumer Hedonism looks different from other religions is that it’s the dominant religion of our society. The dominant religion always looks different.

You see, when a religion truly dominates a society, it’s like air. You don’t see it, and you can’t point to it because it’s everywhere. A dominant religion doesn’t seem to have members because everyone is a member. It doesn’t seem to have a temple because the World is its temple. The reason we don’t see the temple of Consumer Hedonism is because we live in it. We can’t get outside of it.

Only when your religion doesn’t dominate society do you need a building like this one. Churches are like fortresses; you build them because the world out there is foreign territory. You enclose a space that your religion can dominate, because it can’t dominate the world out there. If it did, you wouldn’t need any special schools or rituals. Just by living, people would breathe in your teachings. Just by living, they’d perform your rituals.

The fundamental questions a religion needs to answer aren’t about God and the afterlife, they’re about life here and now. What should we be trying to do? Where should we look for fulfillment? What is going to save us from misery? What really matters and why? Some religions may need a theory of God or the afterlife to make sense out of their answers, but Consumer Hedonism doesn’t. That doesn’t mean it’s not a religion.

So what are Consumer Hedonism’s answers? Basically this: Only two things are really worth doing in life – satisfying your desires and projecting the right image. If you could do both, you’d be as fulfilled as it is possible to be. So how do you do it? You satisfy your desires by buying things and by manipulating people into giving you what you want. And you cast the right image by aligning yourself with the saints of Consumer Hedonism, the celebrities.

No Sunday school teaches us how to worship the celebrities, but we all do it. Sometimes we imitate them. We wear their t-shirts and sunglasses. We repeat their famous lines, which we know by heart, as if we learned them from a catechism. Or we worship them from afar. We know their nicknames, their cars, their pets, and the convoluted mythology of who has been married to who.

If you fall out of step with the celebrities, no church council has to vote to shun you. It happens automatically. Conversations just pass you by. Everyone else laughs and you’re there saying “What? What?”

But if you could be one with the celebrities, if you could have the same car or the same haircut or learn to flash the same smile – you’d be so cool. How could you not be totally fulfilled?

Except for the Amish and a few other closed communities, every child in America is raised Consumer Hedonist. Most of us still practice it. Here’s a test. It’s a take-home test, self-graded. Psalm 38 says, “In thee, O Lord, is my hope.” Where is your hope? When you daydream about a better life, what specifically are you hoping for?

Better things like a house or car?

Physical satisfaction like food or sex?

Something to improve your image, like a big promotion or a diet that really works?

Or maybe you think about money, which stands in for all three? Some people hope in the Lord. Some people hope in the Lottery.

Whatever your hope is, wherever you look for a better life, that’s the religion that is real to you, the one you’re counting on to save you from misery. And not until you become disillusioned with that religion will you have any deeper spiritual awakening.

Most of us do get disillusioned at some point, because Consumer Hedonism is all sizzle and no steak. You actually can’t be fulfilled by satisfying your desires and impressing people. Brad Pitt and Britney Spears will not save you. We all know that at some level, but Consumer Hedonism laughs at our knowledge. It sells us movies about its own emptiness and invites us to project an image of being wise to it all. You can buy things to flesh that image out, and imitate a whole other pantheon of celebrities. “This medallion comes from Tibet. It’s, like, so spiritual.”

No matter how many times we fail to consume our way to fulfillment, it always seems like our own fault. We bought the wrong things. We picked the wrong celebrities. (Tom Cruise really did not come through for me this year. And I don’t even want to talk about Michael Jackson.) Salvation-by-coolness could still work, if you were just a little bit cooler.

No it couldn’t. Don’t try again. Don’t try to do better this time. It doesn’t work.

It doesn’t work because there really is something deep and important going on in life, and you can only find fulfillment by connecting with those deeper values. This is the message of both liberal and conservative religion. Both. If you can’t hear that message in the other side, listen harder.

Liberals and conservatives alike reject the emptiness of Consumer Hedonism, and nurture values that transcend desire and image: Values like family and friends and community. Compassion for the stranger. A just society. Appreciating the wonder of creation. Building a personal relationship with Beauty and with Knowledge and with Understanding. When those values are part of your experience of every moment, when you have trained yourself to experience them as immediately as you experience your physical desires, you’re there. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.”

The main difference between religious liberals and religious conservatives is in where they look for those values and how they hope to bring them into the world. Conservatives look to traditional values, a way of life that they believe worked for our ancestors. Typically, a conservative faith has a Golden Age it wants to preserve or restore: Eden, ancient Israel, the Jerusalem of the Apostles, the Medina of Muhammad, or even the small-town America of Norman Rockwell. Conservatives see the deeper values of those communities being replaced by practices that satisfy more superficial desires.

Liberals, on the other hand, attach their vision of deeper values to a future Utopia or to a Platonic ideal. They see themselves not as restoring a Golden Age, but as marching onward and upward towards a world more perfect than has ever existed before. Two centuries ago, a world without institutionalized slavery was a complete dream. No Golden Age had ever achieved it. But here we are.

Whether the Past or the Future makes a better home for our dreams of higher values — that would be an interesting debate to have with the conservatives. And we could have it – after we recognize our common struggle against Consumer Hedonism and its empty values. The beginning of a productive liberal/conservative dialog is for both sides to acknowledge that we share a nightmare, a Dystopia:

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Where all relationships are transient.
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Where life is cheap.
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Where winning is everything.
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Where no one will sacrifice for the common good.
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Where impulse satisfaction outweighs any consequences.
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Where the innocent are not protected.
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Where the old are cast aside and the next generation is left to raise itself.
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Where profit is the ultimate argument, and money answers all questions.
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Where no one is willing to stand on principle, and truth doesn’t matter.