The Wisdom of Genghis Khan

A Labor Day Sermon at Countryside Church, Unitarian Universalist

September 4, 2022

The Rev. Dr. C. Scot Giles

A Seeker After Wisdom

And so there was a young man who sought to become wise. Learning that there was a skillful teacher of wisdom living atop a mountain, the young man slowly, and laboriously climbed to the place where the teacher sat in perfect repose.

“Oh wise teacher,” the young man said. “Tell me the secret of life.” The teacher looked at the young man for a long time, and then said “The secret of life is like a cup of tea.”

“What!” exclaimed the young man. I dropped out of college to come here. I have climbed up this whole fracking mountain, and all you have for me is that life is like a cup of tea!”

The teacher paused and said, “Well, perhaps life isn’t like a cup of tea.”

We chuckle at stories like this. One interpretation of this story is that sometimes things are not what they seem. The wise teacher you’ve always heard about may not actually know squat. Appearances can be deceptive. Rumors are not always true. Past interpretations of history may be profoundly flawed.

A few months ago I delivered a sermon here about What Rasputin Believed that some people found interesting because it encouraged them to rethink what they believed about a Russian spiritual leader who is usually portrayed as a villain. After that sermon a member of this congregation asked, “What’s next? A sermon about Genghis Khan?”

“Of course not,” I said.

Genghis Khan

His birth name was Temujin, and it is estimated he was born in about1162 and died in 1227 at the age of about 65 years. According to world historian, Marco Polo, he died of an arrow wound from his final battle. There is some variation in the historical accounts. The spelling of his name can be given in a variety of ways, often spelled with a “G” in the West while in Asia and China you will often find it spelled with a CH sound. 

Born to an aristocratic family, his father fell from political grace and died, and Genghis and his mother were reduced to poverty. They lived by hunting and foraging. Angry at this treatment, Genghis realized he must not become bitter. There is an old Mongol saying, ‘the teeth in the mouth eat meat, the teeth in the mind eat your happiness.”

But his mother was a warrior, as some women were in that culture, and she raised her son to be a warlord. He came to believe that a person had some control over their destiny. One could accept drought or search for water. One could surrender to the wolf or fight it and survive. If you accepted defeat, more would come. He rose in power. 

He was the founder of the Mongol Empire, and was called Emperor or Khan in that language. That empire was the largest contiguous empire in the world to this day. It encompassed all of Asia, and it spread all the way to modern Russia and Poland in the West, and to Gaza in the Near East. The only time such an empire has been created.

Every soldier among the Mongols was Calvary and the army moved at lightning speed. There was no supply chain. The Mongols could ride for days, sleeping and eating in the saddle without needing to make camp or build a fire.

Genghis created the Yassa, or the civilian and military code, one of the earliest systems of law. While tales of military conquest and battles abound, Khan enhanced and protected the Great Silk Road, a trade route that linked China, through Afghanistan and the Near East all the way to Rome. 

By bringing the entirety of the Great Silk Road under a uniform political system, he stabilized it and it became a highway of information and learning as well as silk and spices.

He created a uniform system of writing, the Uyghur Script. He enlarged Great Silk Road which fostered the spread of culture, technology and philosophy throughout the world of its day. His government was a strict meritocracy. It didn’t matter who your parents were. You would be judged on your abilities.

The Great Khan had many wives and concubines, as was common among powerful Mongol men. Perhaps inspired by his competent and strong mother, Genghis valued the wisdom and intelligence of women, and often made his wives and concubines leaders in their own right. Scientists tell us that 8% of male Mongols today are his descendants, and that .5 % of all men alive today have some of his genes. As my wife likes to say, “he was a busy boy.” 

Genghis asked to be buried simply without markings, as was the custom of his people. But legend has it that he was actually entombed in a vast complex as fitted the greatest leader in the world of that time. It is said that the funeral escort killed everyone in their path so no one would know the location of his grave - although there is a belief among archeologists that the modern Chinese government has found the site using ground-penetrating radar, but forbid its excavation in an effort to block Mongolian nationalism from rising again. In fact it is illegal in China to speak or write about Genghis Khan in a positive way. 

Genghis Khan believed in and practice religious toleration. Most believe that he practiced the shamanic religion of his ancestors - worshipping the Eternal Blue Sky as a sign of the eternal powers. Just as your personal problems might interfere with your personal happiness, the shaman of Khan’s time taught that such things were like smoke in the Eternal Blue Sky, that would always clear. 

It was an optimistic faith and still lives on. It was practiced by one of my professors at the University of Chicago who kept a Mongolian Spirit Mirror (where one was said to see visions) and a large offering spoon for the spirits on his desk.

But chief among all Khan’s works and ideas there is one theme that stands out. He was a tolerant man. While other world leaders before him had made moves toward religious toleration, Genghis Khan was the first to make it a universal law. 

Rather than establishing an approved state religion and then giving people freedom to not practice it. Khan declared that every person was free to find their own way of belief. There would be no established state religion at all. That was unique. In a way he was the first true Universalist.

Everywhere he went, Khan would summon the religious leaders to meet with him, and he would flatter them until their caution abated. Then he would listen to what they said and noticed what they did. He had no interest in hearing about the divine origin of their scriptures. He judged religions based on the deeds that religion inspired people to do. 

In this is anticipated the saying by Alex Trek, “Don’t tell me what you believe. I’ll observe how you behave and I will make my own determination.” I once said that at a church Board meeting. It didn’t go over well. (It wasn’t this church).

Khan even gave the clergy of various religions in his empire a tax exemption (huzzah!), which he would extend to teachers and doctors as well. We know nothing of his appearance as he forbade any image of him to be created. The statues you may see are artistic imaginings. 

So while the image you may have in mind of Genghis Kahn is of a warlike barbarian who conquered by atrocity. The reality is that he rose from poverty to be the leader of the world in his day. While he fought wars, he also united the world creating a common system of law and written text. He protected and expanded the trade route that allowed civilization to flow from East to West. Was an egalitarian leader who valued the leadership of both men and women, regardless of family or class.

While the religious and political leaders in Europe were calling for bloody crusades, burning people at stakes or drawing and quartering people because they disagreed, the Great Khan was uniting the world, fostering trade, laws, fairness and learning. And everyone could believe whatever that wanted. The wisdom of Genghis Khan was that tolerance of difference among people was a good thing. 

Not what you may have thought. Sometimes life isn’t a cup of tea.

The Influence on American Society

It was Khan’s doctrine of absolute tolerance that enabled him to build his empire. So long as you had some common sense and didn’t challenge established law, you could do what you wanted and believe what you wanted. 

Political scientists call this image of a unified Eastern European power from China to Russia, Eurasia. Khan created the first, and so far only, Eurasian Empire.

Establishing such a political empire is a dream among several contemporary world leaders. There is one school of thought that China hopes to establish a modern Eurasian Empire. 

There is a prominent Russian political philosopher named Aleksandr Dugin. (if that name sounds familiar it is because his daughter, Darya, was recently assassinated). Durgin wrote for years that it is the “duty” of Russia to re-establish an Eurasian Empire united by the vision of a strict version of Russian Orthodox Christianity. He is one of the primary advisors to Vladimir Putin, The political vision of Genghis Khan persists to this day, and is as real as the warships on the Black Sea off the coast or the Ukraine this morning. 

Yet I believe these efforts to re-establish Eurasia in modern times will fail, because the only time that has ever been achieved was under Genghis Khan, and it was built on tolerance. Today’s efforts are built on anything but. 

You may notice some similarity between the religious universalism of Genghis Khan and some of the emphasis on religious toleration upon which America was founded. That similarity is not a coincidence.

Martha Washington gave her husband a biography of Genghis Khan, titled Zingis, by Anne de La Roche-Guilhem. George Washington, a learned person and avid reader, kept the book in his library at Mount Vernon, where it is to this day.

Another biography of Genghis Kahn, titled The History of Genghizcan the Great, by Francois Petis de la Croix, was published in 1710. The book was promoted by Ben Franklin. But the person who purchased the most copies was one Thomas Jefferson, who often bought copies to give them as gifts. One copy, inscribed by Jefferson was presented to his granddaughter, Cornelia Jefferson Randolph on her 17th birthday, and the inscription urges her to study it with care. This book lifted up and stressed the Great Kahn’s Law of Religious Toleration.

As the founders of our nation were in many cases Unitarians or Universalists, know that the philosophical roots of our Republic, and of our Unitarian Universalist faith, were nourished by the ideas Genghis Khan.

Things are not always what they seem. Maybe life isn’t like a cup of tea.

Tolerance As A Value

Back in my day, everyone who was preparing to enter Unitarian Universalist ministry was required to read the two volumes of Earl Morse Wilbur’s A History of Unitarianism. The essence of Unitarian history that Wilbur distilled from his research was that the essential genus that drove our religious movement forward was its faith in three values” Freedom (there was to be no creed), Reason (we decide things by discussion and vote) and Tolerance (one did not try to control what other people believed). Of these values, even the first - Freedom depends on the third - Tolerance. You can only have freedom if people are tolerated and not compelled.

Of the Unitarian values, Tolerance was the foundation. If anyone asks what is one of the main spiritual disciplines of Unitarian Universalism, I’d argue it’s toleration.

The Random House Dictionary defines tolerance as “a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, beliefs, practices, racial or ethnic origins, etc., differ from one’s own.” Basically, it is a way you treat anyone you regard as “other” than you. 

It doesn’t mean one just puts up with stuff. We don’t tolerate crimes, unethical or immoral behavior. No one should tolerate racism, sexist or forms of oppression. But I believe we should tolerate disagreement without needing to demonize someone else. 

You can seek to convince, argue, negotiate or agree to disagree. And everyone will have their personal list of things they cannot tolerate, but the shorter that list, the happier you will probably be. The longer that list the more drama you will have.

One of my professors in theological school once said, “You know, churches don’t break up over the great issues of theology. They break up over what color we decided to paint the nursery.”

It is better to be tolerant. You will have less drama. 

At its basis, tolerance implies humility (because I realize I could be mistaken) and respect (because I understand you are the star of your own life and have a right to live it as you see fit, subject to law and ethics). 

History teaches that tolerance is a requirement for greatness.

We see this in scripture. Most of us know the story of the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt under the leadership of Moses. The plot is that the Hebrews were enslaved by the Egyptians because of a famine (that’s what the story of Pharaoh and Joseph is all about). They were lead from slavery by Moses into a pilgrimage of forty years.

We know that the literal story of the Exodus in the Old Testament could not be true. When we read the story and do the math, supposedly about three million Hebrews were involved in the Exodus. If that were true it would have devastated the Egyptian economy - but no historical account of such an impact exists. 

Instead, it is likely that some Hebrews escaped from Egypt (“Moses,” is after all, an Egyptian name) and while they wandered in the wilderness they were joined by other nomadic tribes and their numbers grew. 

Some scholars even believe that the ritual verse used in the tribal adoption ceremony was preserved in Deuteronomy 16:5, “a wandering Armenian was my father, he went down to Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, but there he became a great, mighty and populous nation.” As that verse was ritually recited a tribe was adopted into the Hebrews by affirming that narrative.

How did the ancient Hebrews unite so many different tribes into one nation - tolerance. It was commanded in Exodus 22:21, “Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

“Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him,” In short, you tolerate them. That allows people to come together. 

Today

As I look at the world today, as well as at our own great land, I sort of wish we remembered that ancient lesson of tolerance. For that lesson was the great wisdom of Genghis Khan.

We do not live in a tolerant time. Our politics has become tribal, and I have actually listened to people in my consultation room who think a perfectly acceptable solution to the unrest of our time is for half the nation to murder the other half. It’s as if many have concluded that if you disagree with someone you must also fear or hate them. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. You don’t have to compromise your convictions in order to be compassionate or tolerant. You just need to stop demanding that others agree with you.

But we live in a time where people are contemptuous of each other and they keep expanding the definition of what constitutes the “other.” As I watch the news I have to struggle to remember not to do that. 

And if the other person isn’t tolerant, you show them the way. You don’t take “BS,” but you don’t descend to their level either.

But the ancient victories of Genghis Khan show that success cannot be achieved by division, only by tolerance. Somehow we are going to have to find a way to get along without killing each other. Khan reaches from beyond his hidden grave to remind us that tolerance is a prerequisite for greatness. It’s centrality to Unitarian Universalism is the reason why ours is a great faith, despite its size.

It’s hard. I have to remind myself that tolerance is a discipline that requires practice. But I sincerely believe we get a richer brew when the many voices are allowed to speak. 

Like you, I worry about where things are going in this great land on this Labor Day Sunday. But if there is hope, it lies with tolerance and the people who are willing to practice it.

Unitarian Universalism is a tiny religious community, but we do carry the torch of religious tolerance high, and that is something to be proud of. As our society continues to be troubled, we at least know that we are the heritors of the Great Wisdom, echoing down the years though the founding of our nation to this day. 

And that’s my sermon for this Labor Day.