Power Without Love…Love Without Power ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
January 14, 2024
It wasn’t until the election of 2016 that I fully came to understand the depth of the derision and dislike that conservative sectors of our country, actually, reactionaries, feel for liberals. I’m not sure how I was able to insulate myself to such an extent; was I blocking my ears and eyes with bubble wrap? Perhaps it wasn’t so overt in past years. But I remember well the first time I heard people like myself being referred to as ‘snowflakes’. Fragile, easily destroyed. And I spluttered in protest: “That is certainly not true! I can face reality, I can confront hard truths, I don’t melt!”
But what I came to understand was that the more reactionary among us have a very limited view of what power is; what we mean by power. And because they gravitate toward displays of force, such as carrying powerful weapons, they are likely only to understand power as force. Or intimidation, or coercion. And they interpret other ways of acting as weak.
We have a name for that sort of power. We call it ‘power over’: a wish to impose one’s will on others, a belief that some should be able to make decisions for others, to control others. Power over: the examples throughout our history are many. Enslavement, for starters; when some people literally own the bodies of other people. Other examples: Forcing native people to give up their ancestral lands, to move onto reservations. Or throughout our history to the present: Denying whole groups of citizens the right to vote. Decreeing where they could sit on a bus. Denying many people the right to marry. Refusing to allow women the right to manage their own reproductive health.
This is the kind of power Dr. Martin Luther King was talking about when he talked about ‘power without love.’ And despite the lofty words of our founding documents, our country’s history is full of people exercising power without love, and they continue to do so.
Now, how about the liberals? It has been said that liberals are likely to try to avoid power. Instead, uncomfortable with the idea of exerting power over others, they might try to seek influence. And if people who try to reject power altogether are not careful, they can end up caring, but powerless. Offering love without power.
Dr. King cautioned liberals about this as we heard in our reading earlier: “What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic.”
Power without love… or love without power. But do we have to seek just one or the other? Are those the only two ways to live in the world?
Fortunately not. We can choose, and Americans have chosen since 1789, a different form of power known as ‘power with’. Shared power. The work of liberal governments is to create power, but not for itself. A liberal government’s role is to increase power for society and to share it, rather than to control it and limit it to a small group of people. (from Freedom’s Power: The True Force of Liberalism, by Paul Starr. Chapter 1: Liberalism and the Discipline of Power)
Paul Starr, the author of the book Freedom’s Power: the True Force of Liberalism, observes that a liberal government imposes limits on power, even as the goal is to spread it further. We see this reflected throughout our system of government: in the language of the Constitution, the foundation of the rule of law, the checks and balances established by three equal branches of government. Starr calls this ‘disciplined power’. Perhaps ‘decentralized power’ is a good description as well, as well as this: freedom and liberty with responsibility.
Regardless of what we name it, this form of power, power with, has a foundation in respect and compassion for the citizens; compassion and respect born of love for people. There is a trust in people, in each other; a belief that people can exercise power well. Ultimately, we see this in the language of the Declaration of Independence; that people are given the rights of liberty and the opportunity to flourish. As I have mentioned in the past, the use of the word ‘happiness’ in the Declaration of Independence was not defined as we would define it today – as an emotion associated with pleasure, but rather as the opportunity to flourish. To be able to flourish was to be happy. The role of government, as the Founders saw it, was to create a framework to enable flourishing. They created a form of government that both limited its own power, and sought to disperse it.
Compared to a military dictatorship, some would see this as weak. It can be very hard for some people to feel the sense of trust necessary to allow a liberal democracy to work. Trust, of course, is born out of love, out of a desire to understand and feel compassion for one another. If we see each other as fully human, and as an equal part of the society we share, then we can trust more readily. A government that is not trusting, is one that doesn’t see people as equal and part of the whole. A government not founded on trust is one that will try to control power.
We here in the United States have been struggling to balance these two visions since our founding. Perhaps looking at the history of voting rights offers the best example of this tension. At the very beginning, of course, only male property owners had the right to vote. And in this country, democracy and the impact of the popular vote was limited (and is still limited, by the Electoral College.) Those in power still have their thumb on the scale, can still exert control of election outcomes, through the Electoral College. But from our earliest years, states began to remove the requirements that people own property in order to vote. Then black men theoretically were granted the right to vote. Women joined the ranks in the 1920’s. Direct election of United States senators was established.
However, there was constant tension between conservatives and liberals. Reading a timeline of the expansion of voting rights feels like watching a dance – one state will abolish poll taxes, and another state will reinstate them. One state might allow women to vote, but then rescind the right a year or two later. Native Americans and Chinese Americans were finally enfranchised in the mid-20th century. But at the same time the literacy tests imposed in the Southern states completely undermined efforts of black citizens to vote in those states. Back and forth it went, and continues to go. In the last election there were multiple stories of polling places being closed, moved to out of the way areas inaccessible for people without cars, or having sharply curtailed hours. And so it goes, back and forth, between those who try to hoard power, and those who believe it should be spread more widely. Those who would claim power for a small group claim that they are trying to protect the integrity of the voting process, to prevent voter fraud. And we see once again the effort to sow mistrust; to insist on seeing large groups of people as Other, as not deserving, and not to be trusted. We see once again power without love.
Last spring journalist and podcast host Ezra Klein interviewed Harvard scholar Danielle Allen. As a mixed-race women she embodies much of the tension present in our society around rights and privileges; her parents were married before it was legal for them to do so.
Danielle Allen advocates for what she calls ‘power-sharing liberalism’, meaning extending more rights and opening up access to power for more and more people. She told Ezra Klein, “Power-sharing liberalism is really the goal to build, in the 21st century, a version of a rights-protecting constitutional democracy where power is genuinely shared throughout organizational structures (and) political institutions.” Professor Allen wants to see more equality of participation, what she called, “co-ownership of our public spaces and public life.” She wants to have more people gain access to decision-making so that they can flourish. (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/14/podcasts/ezra-klein-podcast-transcript-danielle-allen.html)
Professor Allen noted something that I found surprising. She cited Massachusetts as an example of a state where voting is, as she put it, ‘maldistributed’. Voting patterns are heavily skewed toward property owners in Massachusetts, and renters are much less likely to vote. One of the ways Allen is proposing encouraging more participation among renters is to institute same-day voting in Massachusetts. She argues that renters are much more transient, and are unlikely to keep registering to vote every time they move, at least 10 days prior to an election. If they were allowed to register at the same time they went to vote, she believes that many more renters, people who have different concerns than property owners, will be able to participate and thereby influence state policy. Their voices would finally be heard in proportion to their numbers. Here we see a willingness to trust; to believe that people (most, anyway) will do the right thing. Here is the offer of power with love.
The stakes of this struggle between two visions of power feel very high these days. Danielle Allen noted that there is a political theory that over time, every human organizational form has tended toward oligarchy, or as she put it, toward capture. Professor Allen posits that the “work of democracy is to continuously resist capture. There is no end of history. There is no state of rest for democracy. Democracy is the work of resisting capture by powerful interests and restoring power-sharing just over and over and over again.” (Ibid.). I was fascinated by this statement, because I am someone who in her heart of hearts believes that the progress of love and justice should unfold in a straight line. I am frustrated by the dance – the one step forward, one step backward nature of trying to not just expand democracy, but to preserve it at all.
My friends, we are in those months of the year when we take a close look at topics such as love, and justice. Dr. Martin Luther King spoke frequently about love, and justice, and power, and he spoke forcefully about the need for a form of love that could translate into power, and at the same time continue to maintain its goal of justice and human flourishing.
Too often, we have watched others wield the kind of power that makes us uncomfortable, the kind where love and compassion is not present, and we cannot see ourselves; cannot see a role for ourselves in seeking power. In return, we are labelled ‘snowflakes’. But Dr. King and others have offered us a way forward; a middle way of embracing the kind of power that is born out of love, and that seeks to foster the growth and participation of other people. We can find that power, usually by finding other people committed to it as well, and joining forces. It has been done before, and it will need to be done again, over and over and over again.
Mr friends, there is yet another name for this power: this ‘power-with’, this disciplined power. It is Beloved Community, in which all are welcomed, all invited to participate and to share. May we all continue to strive to bring forth this kind of power, this Beloved Community, and to commit to sustain it.
Blessed Be.
Amen.
