Tragedy in Tucson
by the Rev. Colin Bossen, January 9, 2011
My intention this morning had been to preach a sermon about the one year anniversary of the Haitian earthquake. In that sermon I intended to struggle with the human problem of evil and how we as individuals and a society confront suffering. In the light of the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of at least six others, including a federal judge and a nine year-old child, it seems appropriate to change the focus of my sermon, though the theme remains the same.
When we are faced with tragedy the central tasks of the liberal religious community come clearly into focus. As religious liberals we gather to make sense of the joy and suffering in our lives and to dream of a better world. When, whether privately or publicly, tragedy enters our lives the liberal religious community provides us with a place in which to wrestle with the meaning we might make and find comfort in the human companionship of our fellows.
A public tragedy, like yesterday's shooting in Arizona, affects all of us. By its very nature it dominates public discourse and reminds us that in our violence prone society no one is safe. Whether an attack upon a political figure, a shooting in a high school or a blast of gunfire in a church, the implicit message from such attacks is that violence may thrust itself into our lives at any time.
This message becomes all the more stark when we consider that the yesterday's shooting was not an isolated incident but part of a pattern of societal behavior. This is the second time in three years that I have changed my sermon topic because of a public act of violence. The first was in the summer of 2008 when a gunman killed two people at a Unitarian Universalist congregation in Knoxville during a congregational program. In that instance the murders were motivated by a mentally unhinged person's desire to kill liberals.
Since then there have been numerable other incidents of public violence. The most well known, but far from the only, are the murder of Doctor George Tiller during a church service and when the Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan shot to death twelve people in Ft. Hood.
Such repeated acts of violence should serve as a wake up call. Something is deeply wrong in our country. As Peter Morales, the President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, wrote yesterday: "These murders in Tucson should cause all Americans to reflect humbly, to look into our souls."
A call to humble reflection during a time of national tragedy is a call worth heeding. When tragedy erupts it is often people's first reaction to seek easy answers and simple solutions. As a society we cast about for someone to blame. Many of us choose preselected narratives, narratives that often prove to be false.
The great preacher and peace activist William Sloane Coffin once observed that "Evil is the soul of a nation explaining away its flaws by blaming others." In the wake of events like yesterday's shooting it is easy to succumb to such evil. I remember that after 1993 Oklahoma City bombings many people were eager to blame Islamic extremists. Yet it soon emerged that the bombers were two white men from Michigan with extreme right wing views. Similarly, the televangelist Jerry Falwell initially wanted to blame the September 11th attacks on, in his words, "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians." He felt that these people, and his list includes most of us in this room, weakened the country by turning it away from his god.
Such outbursts and ill-formed prejudices do little to help the country heal after public acts of violence. They instead help foster a climate of fear that undermines any sense of unity that may come from the tragedy itself.
Those of us on the left would do well to remember this in the coming days. It is true that in the preparation for the 2010 campaign season Sarah Palin issued a graphic featuring Representative Giffords, along with several other Democratic members of Congress, in the crosshairs. It is also true that recent rhetoric on the right, by Mrs. Palin and others, has called for a "second amendment solution" to problems in national government and challenged people to "Lock and Load" in the lead up to the election.
Yet it is too early to say whether such violent rhetoric had a direct connection with yesterday's shooting. It appears Jared Lee Loughner is a mentally ill young man whose motivations are opaque to others. The three YouTube videos that he made to highlight his political and philosophical beliefs are essentially nonsensical. Instead of providing a picture of someone motivated by right wing ideology they suggest an individual lost in the haze of his own reality.
According to the Huffington Post, Loughner's MySpace page included references to the Communist Manifesto and George Orwell's "Animal Farm." Last night there were post's on Sarah Palin's facebook page placing the blame for the shooting not on right wing political rhetoric but on the politics of the left. It seems clear to me that in the coming days, until more is know about the shooter, there will be efforts by both some on the right and some on the left to blame yesterday's violence on the other side.
Humble reflection calls us to move beyond such prejudicial preselected narratives when confronted with tragedy. Instead it challenges us to acknowledge that most social problems have causes that cannot be easily reduced to stereotypes or nine second sound bytes.
This is most certainly true of the wave of public shootings that our country has witnessed in the last few decades. Loughner, Doctor Tiller's murderer, Major Hasan, the shooter at Virginia Tech, the young men at Columbine, all had different motivations for their violent acts. The man who killed Doctor Tiller is an antiabortionist. Major Hasan holds radical right wing Islamic beliefs. The Columbine and Virginia Tech shooters were isolated loners. It is difficult not to see these shootings as part of a pattern. It is also difficult to construct a narrative whereby the root of that pattern falls neatly on either side of the left-right divide.
For my part I suspect that many of the act of public violence that we have witnessed have at least three sources. They are the product of a culture of violence, they are spurred on by a sensationalist media and they are enabled by a society that does not offer adequate support for the mentally ill or unstable.
In my sermon in the wake of the Knoxville shootings I argued that acts of indiscriminate gun violence are usually brought about by marginalized and disturbed individuals who "act out in the only language they know, the language of violence." I pointed out that, "If one listens to many government officials or pays attention to the daily newscasts it seems that violence is supposed to be the method by which we humans solve our problems." The state of Ohio, for example, executes murderers. The United States military is currently fighting a war on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries.
The language of war also fills the societal landscape. As I said two years ago, "Modern prohibition is called the war on drugs. During the sixties President Johnson organized the war on poverty. President Nixon declared a war on cancer... disagreements between social liberals and conservatives are often called... culture wars."
I followed these observations with two rhetorical questions: "In such a world is it any wonder that the desperate take up arms and strike out against those whom they perceive as their oppressors? How often have they had a chance to imagine a different course of action?"
Almost two millennium ago Jesus warned one of his followers that "All who take the sword die by the sword." With so many in our society encouraged to cling to the sword it cannot be a wonder that public acts of violence are prevalent.
This brings me to the second thing I believe is a cause of public acts of violence, our sensationalist media. The artist Andy Warhol has been paraphrased as saying, "In the future everyone will have fifteen minutes of fame." The media has allowed the shooters of the last decades to achieve far more notoriety than they ever would have otherwise. Jared Lee Loughner has earned a place in history by shooting Representative Giffords and killing others. Over the next few days the media will focus on his personal life and pre-mayhem history. This obsession with petty details and the need to fill out the news cycle guarantee that he will obtain a degree of immortality.
Loughner's incomprehensible YouTube videos indicate that he sought a wider audience for his grievances and philosophy. The same has been true of many other shooters. The shooter at Virginia Tech, for instance, created a multimedia manifesto to justify his actions. The use of violence allows the shooters to draw media attention to their perceived grievances and agendas in ways that would never otherwise be possible. So while informing the public about why the shooter acted the media also motivates future shooters by implicitly promising them a venue if they act violently.
Finally, it must be admitted that our society's lack of structural support for the mentally ill allows shooters like Loughner to purchase guns and evade treatment. Much of the information about Loughner that has emerged in the last hours indicates that his behavior was eradicate. The same has been true of many previous shooters. The Virginia Tech shooter suffered from mental health issues. Yet, as appears to be true of Loughner, he was able to purchase his firearms legally.
We could focus our attention on the need for stronger laws legislating the purchase and possession of guns. While this is an important issue it sidesteps the larger reality that our society is not very good at taking care of those most in need. As minister of this and other congregations I have repeatedly witnessed how people with severe mental health issues fall through the cracks of our crumbling social safety programs. Often it seems that those who are the most mentally ill manage to evade treatment and become a threat to themselves and others. Instead of treating them with compassion and helping ensure that they receive the medical care they need our society pushes them to the margins. It should be no wonder then that some with easy access to guns ultimately act violently.
When we reflect humbly and seek to discover the root causes of yesterday's gun violence we can also begin to dream of a different world. The liberal religious tradition offers us not only the opportunity to understand why public tragedy takes place but also the possibility of imagining a world where public tragedy is lessened.
In his statement yesterday President Morales challenged us to "rededicate ourselves to creating a culture... where violence has no place." Unitarian Universalism contains rich resources that might help us meet that challenge. The best parts of our tradition call for us to meet violence and hate with love. It is only the force of love that can address the underlying issues that produced yesterday's public violence.
After such a statement, many might accuse me of airy-fairy preacher talk. Love is often seen as an impractical solution incapable of addressing the world's real problems. But few solutions to the problems underlying yesterday's shooting will come unless they are rooted in love. The legacies of Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi and other advocates of non-violence demonstrate that violence can only be overcome by love. The media will not be transformed unless journalists, the public and media executives shift their attention from sensationalist coverage to compassion for victims and perpetrators alike. The mentally ill and marginalized will not receive the care they need until love and empathy cause us all to demand the creation of an adequate social safety net.
To hope for such things is perhaps dreaming in the dark. There is little reason to imagine that love will suddenly transform the national political landscape. Nor should we expect that the yesterday's tragedy will push our country towards humble reflection. But we can hold out the vision that these things are possible and necessary.
One of the tasks of the liberal religious community is to point the way towards a better future. In our congregation and in our lives we can seek to act from love rather than from hate. We can choose to avoid simple narratives and instead seek the root causes of society's problems. Then we might as individuals and collectively gently tilt society in a different direction.
This is not easy work. It requires that we almost demand the impossible from ourselves and each other. Almost, but not quite for there have been times in the public discourse and, I am certain, in almost all of our private lives where love has burst forth and left the world transformed.
Among the most profound examples of the transformative power of love that I have witnessed is a story that I included in my sermon after the Knoxville shootings. As I shared then, "when I was in high school one of my acquaintances--the older brother of one of my brother's best friends--took a gun, a thermos full of gasoline and a lighter to our school. For years this young man had been systematically taunted, tortured and humiliated by one of the school's bullies. Finally he had had enough and decided to strike back... During AP Biology he pulled out the gun and pointed it at the bully. He then proceeded to dose the bully with gasoline. He went for his lighter and... When the lighter would not catch my acquaintance turned the gun on himself. Fortunately, the AP Biology teacher managed to talk him down before he pulled the trigger. The police arrived and my acquaintance was disarmed and removed from the classroom. In those more lenient times he was sent to a psychiatric hospital."
I shared that story then, and I share it now, because unlike most such acts it has a happy ending. Once in the hospital my acquaintance was able to receive the high quality medical care he needed. Eventually, with the love and support of his family, he was able to lead a normal life. He went to college, got married and became a nurse, dedicating his life to helping others.
Violence can be overcome with love and compassion. In our society we witnessed it repeatedly during the civil rights movement. In my life I have witnessed it with the shooter from my high school and in many lesser acts.
In the wake of the terrible shootings yesterday the call to love is clear. In the face of discord and strife, of cheap political rhetoric and sensationalism, we must continue to proclaim the transformative power of love. There is no hope beyond this. If we meet violence with violence there will be more violence. If we meet stereotypes and scapegoating with the same there will be more stereotypes and scapegoating. But if we meet them with love there remains hope for transformation.
That it may be so, I say Amen and Blessed Be.