Justice Sunday

Sorry for the brief hiatus. Last week was incredibly busy, partly due to work and partly due to busy preparations for Justice Sunday, which I organized for my church. I'm currently my church's committee chair/local representative for the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), and Justice Sunday is something that UUSC sponsors every year to educate UU congregations about a social justice issue and inspire them to take action.

I began as UUSC chair last fall; prior to that, no one had really invested a lot in promoting UUSC at our church. I decided that Justice Sunday was something I really wanted to help get off the ground, so I've been pretty busy for the last few weeks making plans, helping to put together the service, and delegating tasks to my committee members.

In addition to serving as leader for the worship service, I gave a 5-minute talk on the Justice Sunday topic for this year: the costs of the war in Iraq. The more I learned about this issue, the more I realized what a tremendous price we are paying. I've included an excerpt of my talk below and I hope that you will all take the time to read it; this is something I feel we all need to be more educated about.

This year for Justice Sunday, we join other UU congregations around the country in asking ourselves about the costs of the war in Iraq. While we may not all agree on the justification for the war, we can all agree that war comes at a cost. Most of us know the financial tab is high: so far, the war in Iraq has cost more than 460 billion dollars. But what does that number really mean, and how does it relate to our Unitarian Universalist values?

With every dollar our country spends on the war in Iraq, we make a choice. Since March 2003, when President Bush declared war, our government leaders have chosen to invest in a war that has no end in sight. What else might we have chosen to invest in? With the money that has been spent in Iraq over the last several years, we could have provided life-giving treatment for every person in the world infected with HIV/AIDS. The cost of the war for only one year could have provided health insurance for every uninsured American. And the money spent in Iraq for only one week could provide three meals a day for nearly an entire year for 6 million children, the same number that dies from hunger and malnutrition annually.

While we have expended our resources on a seemingly endless war, some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in our own country continue to suffer. More than 1.5 million people were directly affected by Hurricane Katrina, including more than 800,000 citizens who were forced to live outside of their homes—the largest displacement of people since the great Dust Bowl migrations of the 1930s. More than two years later, affordable housing is nonexistent in the Gulf Coast. Health care continues to be sorely lacking with only one of seven hospitals in New Orleans operating at pre-storm levels. Over 4,000 experienced teachers have been laid off from the New Orleans public school system, and while stress and mental health problems continue to increase, funding for mental health services continues to be reduced. With what the US spends on the war in Iraq for just one month, we could afford to rebuild each and every one of the homes and schools destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

So where does this leave us? As Unitarian Universalists, our principles call us to the work of social justice, including our commitment to promoting a world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all. Such a world is possible. But it requires something of us. It requires us to be educated, to act, and to speak out. It requires us to take a stand, even when it is uncomfortable or inconvenient. It requires that we demand of our leaders different choices with our tax dollars—choices that affirm the worth and dignity of every person and that create a more just and peaceful world. Choices that could mean life-saving medical care, nourishment for starving children, or a return to safe and comfortable housing for the victims of Katrina.

In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” As people of faith, we have a moral imperative to ensure that the financial choices we make as a nation are those of spiritual uplift. Today, I ask that you please join other Unitarian Universalists across the country in putting your values into action by educating yourself on this issue, choosing to act, and taking steps to help redirect our nation’s financial resources to those programs that will encourage peace and justice.