As I write, George W. Bush is speaking, and he gave emphasis as he said the words "natural disaster." His speech consists of listing all the stuff he is throwing at the flooded and mangled cities, he gives emphasis to word "assets." He tells the nation it is a priority to repair the infrastructure, and rebuild the communities affected. He thanks a lot of people for helping out. He tells us it important to send cash. He does not talk about a change of policy, apparently we are going to rebuild the status quo ante.
Calling this crisis a natural disaster implies that the horror of destruction we are experiencing in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida is the result of an uncontrollable act of nature. Accepting this construction allows our political leaders, and corporate leaders to return to business as usual. It also allows us to shrug our shoulders and imagine ourselves as powerless, and without responsibility, after all the storm was an "act of God."
Hurricanes happen! There are four or five in a quiet year, and more than ten in an active season. Before there was a homo sapiens, hurricanes built up in the warm seas and came ashore with high winds, storm surge, and rain. Before the European conquest, the Gulf Coast had evolved to absorb more than its share of hurricanes, and it renewed itself in the process.
This catastrophe is a result of how a particular human society has organized its industries, organized its economy, and built its cities and residential structures. If U.S. society respected "the interdependent web of all existence of which we were a part" would we build structures on the banks of rivers that flood, on beaches and barrier islands, on major earthquake fault lines, and below a damned up lake? How do we take account of our environment when we build, and rebuild where nature will continue to be natural.
Religious Liberalism and Theology: August 2005 Archives
I confess, I have misread Emerson. I had assumed with others that he had articulated the ideal of individualism in such an extreme way, that it had had a profoundly negative affect on Unitarianism over the years. We have certainly been an individualistic lot, and we have quoted Emerson to justify this indulgence in the "me" over the needs of the community. In recent years, we have come to realize that we must cherish and build the bonds of community, and that we must develop a strong ethic of mutuality. We are teaching the new gospel of responsible relationality, but we continue much work still needs to be done.
I can't believe that I am writing this, but I think we might be able to enlist Emerson in struggle for right relationship. I have been re-reading Emerson, and Barry Andrews' book Emerson, A Spiritual Guide has been very helpful in the process. I now think that Emerson's most assertive essay on individualism can serve as a very powerful corrective to some of our more facile contemporary understandings of the subject. Emerson wrote in his essay Self-Reliance:
"We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activities. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage of its beams. If we ask when this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or absence is all we can affirm. Every man (sic) discriminates against between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in his expression of them, but he knows these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed."
Self -Reliance is a celebration of genius, according to Barry Andrews, "[b]ut the word genius meant something different for them. For us the word connotes great intelligence or talent; for the Transcendentalists it meant something more like a current of energy or power that can be tapped. In their view, virtually any person could demonstrate genius if he allowed this current to flow through him in an unobstructed way." Emerson is making a statement more profound than an affirmation of "inherent worth and dignity of every person." He is arguing that we all have untold potential, that every person has unrealized spiritual, creative and intellectual powers and these powers lie dormant, and unfulfilled.
Why? Because we conform to expectations of others, and that conformity is the enemy of this inner creative power which he calls genius. "Imitation is suicide." It is here that Emerson is often misunderstood, for years I believed that he was advocating disregard for community, for the sake of expressive individualism. But now I understand that Emerson was advocating, in the discourse of his time, a relational ethic of initiative. As Andrews explains "the self. . .is not the ego or isolated self of modern philosophy or psychology. It is the soul, which, though incarnated in each individual, in nevertheless commonly shared by everything that exists as [an] expression [of]...oversoul." For Emerson, non conformity was not rebellion for the sake of rebellion, or is it the posing of the self against all others, rather it is rejecting inauthentic ways of relating, in favor of genuine mutuality.
In our own times we have come to appreciate this insight anew, but express it different language. We speak of the need for self differentiation, so that we might be a non anxious presence relative to familiar (or congregational) anxiety. We speak of codependency as a dysfunctional way of relating. Despite the misuses of the term by later day social darwinists, self reliance for Emerson, was a necessary step toward authenticity and genuine relationship.
Many religious liberals believe that if people became "more" rational, we could overcome most of the problems facing human beings. The argument seems to be that racism, oppression and violence are irrational, and therefore the people whose actions and words enable racism, oppression and violence are themselves irrational. Thus the liberal hopes that education and "more rational" world views will eventually create sufficient rationality and we will study war no more. Michael Foucault has a different understanding of rationality:
"All human behavior is scheduled and programmed through rationality. There is a logic of institutions and in behavior and in political relations. In even the most violent ones there is a rationality. What is most dangerous in violence is its rationality. Of course violence itself is terrible. But the deepest root of violence and its permanence come out of the form of the rationality we use. The idea had been that if we live in the world of reason, we can get rid of violence. This is quite wrong. Between violence and rationality there is no incompatibility."
Overcoming violence is a question of personal and interpersonal transformation, it means we must cease to accept the logic of violence, and embrace the logic of mutuality. It is a moral and religious choice, it involves a commitment. We must work toward a new ethic of relationship. In order to do this we need must understand the logic of violence, its rationality. Violence is a morality, an alternative moral stance. Yesterday, I wrote about violence as a religious stance, the real religion of America. Adherents of violence include many of the adherents of traditional religious movements, as well secularists who distain religious involvement.
Without regard to the Christian versus non Christian divide, Pat Robertson's pronouncements are defended by those who adhere to the logic of violence, and they are rejected by those repudiate that logic. Gandhi, who taught the world about the non-violent ethic of Jesus, was murdered by a fellow Hindu whose real religion was nationalism and violence. Catholics are continually shocked by their hierarchy's facility at making strong statements for peace, and justice, while allying with a politics of reaction. The mass peace movement among Israelis has been constantly frustrated by the misuse of Judaism by that nations' religious right. The traditional lines of demarcation that divide the religions are relics of the past, the question for our future is who stands for violence and domination and who stands for mutual interdependence and peace
Unitarian Universalists have often extended their notion of freedom of belief to include moral stances. If we have freedom from creeds, if we are encouraged to develop our theological understanding, some of us conclude that we can believe anything that we want. If we can believe anything we want, why not believe what we wish relative to morality? If I am a war monger, and you are a pacifist, is this simply a difference in life styles? Is morality relative? I believe that morality arises out the depths of the human condition, and that there are viable and life giving moralities on the one hand, and destructive and limiting moralities on the other.
Over centuries nations and the religions of power have embodied and institutionalized violence, and many people have accepted its logic. On the other hand there are many, many people who have repudiated the habits, ideas and rationale of violence. The yearning for an alternative to violence is a mass sentiment, one that religious voices need to speak to loudly and consistently. The recent conference on spiritual activism organized by Tikkun is one effort, Rita Brocks efforts to create dialog around Faith Voices for the Common Good is another.
Overcoming violence requires the same kind of transformational work as work to overcome racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression. For Unitarian Universalism to become an alternative to the religion of violence, we must be about personal and interpersonal transformation. To be an real alternative we provide such an alternative. We must also be about reaching out and uniting with all who seek a world reborn.
[Violence] ..not Christianity, is the real religion of America," writes Walter Wink. He continues:
Violence is the ethos of our times, It is the spirituality of the modern world. It has been accorded the status of a religion, demanding from its devotees absolute obedience to death. Its followers are not aware, however, that the devotion they pay to violence is a form of religious piety. Violence is so successful as a myth precisely because it does not seem to mythic in the least. Violence simply appears to be the nature of things. It is what works. It is inevitable, the last and often the first resort to conflicts.
(Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Powers. (Minneapolis, Fortress Press. 1992) p.13-4; p.54-5.)
Violence is not simply a matter of disturbing the peace. Violence is way of relating to others, and ultimately to "interdependent web of all existence" as some of us are fond of saying. The Latin root of violence is related to violating, to breaking right relations with the other by making that other an object for our own manipulation. Thus, we can violate the other by any act that does not treat the other with ultimate respect, with unconditional regard. I think we made a principle about that idea as well.
Unitarian Universalists think of ourselves as an alternative religious response. When I was young we thought of ourselves as an alternative to orthodoxy and authoritarianism in religion. Lately the notion seems to have become normative that we are intended to be an alternative to Christianity. Most Unitarian Universalists have discovered that posing themselves against Christianity is problematic, and limiting. When Unitarian Universalists create a caricature of Christianity, and then pose as "an alternative" to that caricature, they become insubstantial, sectarian and irrelevant as a result
Wink writes our "entire social system has become an ˜economy'." The economy brings us into relations of mutual violence, power over, and privilege. The failure of secular alternatives to the dominations system, such as Marxism is that they adopt the interpersonal and relational logic of domination system as expedients to liberation, and exploitation free future. Only by right means may we achieve right ends.
What might this mean for Unitarian Universalist identity? If we define ourselves as a religious alternative, why not become an alternative to the real religion of America? If we were such an alternative how would that define our mission, how would it shape the ethic we offered for living one's life, and our vision as a faith.
What if we could articulate an alternative to violence? What would it mean for our nation? for our world?
Children in the United States 1937, playing a game of war.
Hurricane Katrina is bearing down on a region that has experienced years of environmental abuse. The Gulf Coast evolved over millennia as the terrain and ecology that welcomed the renewal that came with the tropical storms, recovery was rapid, and drainage was natural. For tens of thousands of years people lived in harmony with the cycles of nature, with the storms, with hot summers, and warm winters. But the ecology has been violently impacted since the European conquest of the area. The Europeans came to this place with a practice of systematic misuse of the land and waterways. Cities are built where cities will be destroyed, and the land is so paved over it floods, destroying habit for plants and wildlife. The destruction is not the result of human impact, it is the result of the impact of humans with a destructive worldview, people whose real religion involved manipulation and violence against "Mother Nature."
There is an awakening to what we have done, and more and more people seek a new relation with the earth. Meanwhile, the Bush administration is working overtime to embarrass our people in the international arena. The latest bit of stupidity involves an upcoming draft statement of principles to be agreed to by 175 heads of state and government attending a Sept. 12 United Nations summit, devoted to poverty and U.N. reorganization. The draft contains a statement of "core values" which contains the following language "respect for human rights, freedom, equality, tolerance, multilateralism and respect for nature." The United States wants the delete "nature" from the list of things to respect.
Ric Grenell of the U.S. mission to the United Nations said the phrase is "too broad a subject, and if we had to define the multiple ways the U.S. government respects nature, the document would be too long and way of its original intent." Other delegates to the U.N. were puzzled by this explanation, Yuri Fedotov, a Russian diplomat said "Nature is something which needs a lot of respect." One would think that the Russian would not have to say that, but given the U.S. delegation he gets the prize for prophetic utterance.
Have you wondered why all the dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church followed the same policy relative to sexual abusive clergy or why the Vatican is now seeking diplomatic immunity to shield the current pontiff from prosecution?
All the Cardinals that voted for this man knew that he was the author of a policy that continued the abuse of lay Catholics, that defied the laws of the all the states in which the church is incorporated, and resulted in the mass alienation of tens of millions of Catholic faithful, yet they elevated him to the papacy. Complicity in violence and abuse is no accident, no mistake in judgement made by honest clerics attempting to cover up a little mischief. These people are part of the domination system, and the logic of their decisions is consistent with their defense of institutional power and a social order that regards people as objects, and truth as what ever they say it is.
Scott Wells writes: "James Luther Adams's construction of "the prophethood of all believers" continues to strike me as a misplaced parallelism to the "priesthood of all believers." In what way does belief shape prophethood? I can't put my finger on it now, but something else should probably stand in its place." Scott is meditating on the missing priest part of this concept. We pray for the healing of his wrists.
While Scott is preparing, I thought I would provide a little explanation of Adams' idea of the laity and its importance for Unitarian Universalists. James Luther Adams (1901-1994) had a profound influence on shaping Unitarian Universalist thinking and identity, especially his appreciation of what was foundational about the liberal tradition and what was transient, his idea of the congregation as a religious community united in covenant, and his reorientation of the mission of religious liberalism from enabling individual freedom from belief to championing a positive witness for liberal values in the public arena. Who we are today we owe in no small part to the teaching of our smiling prophet.
Adams in his essay entitled "Our responsibility in society" (1953) states:
"The churches of the left wing of the Reformation held that the churches of the right wing had effected only half a reformation. ... They demanded a church in which every member, under the power of the Spirit, would have the privilege and the responsibility of interpreting the Gospel and also of assisting to determine the policy of the church. The new church was to make way for a radical laicism -- that is, for the priesthood and the prophethood of all believers."
Adams followed this up with an essay entitled "Radical laicism" (1984) in which he asserted:
"In the present discussion I want to stress the vocation of the laity, assuming according to tradition that everyone is a layperson, an idea expressed in the phrase "the priesthood of all believers."
Everyone is a layperson! But in our common usage, we make a distinction between laity and clergy, and if one looks in a dictionary one will find the term laity defined as the people who are not clergy. We have come to use the term as someone who has no professional training, for example, "when it comes to the law, I am only a lay person." What tradition is Adams speaking about? The term laity comes from the Greek laos, which meant the whole people of God. In the early church, the elders (priests)were set aside from the whole to lead the ritual, teach the gospel, and administer care for the flock. In time the priests assumed the role of mediators between the people of God, and God: they became a spiritual aristocracy. For Adams and the radical protestants, restoring the role of priest to the community was central to the continuing reformation of the church. The Quakers, as radical protestants, took a different tack, they declared their goal was to abolish the laity. By laity they meant the consumers of religion. Different usages of the term laity, but the same idea of radical empowerment of the whole community gathered in covenant.
Adams was insisting that the priestly offices of mediation, healing, and ritualist belonged to the whole body of believers. But he went further, he understood that the purpose of the church was to witness to a new vision, a new relation between that which we held to be Ultimate and humanity. So he insisted that all believers were called to the role of prophets. Prophets called us back to our values, criticized the powerful and championed the oppressed. All on the basis of a faith, not in metaphysical doctrines, but rather a faith based in enduring values.
Scott is right to asking the question, how does belief shape prophethood? For Adams, belief was not simply one's individual credo. By virtue of belonging to a community, one participated in the faith and values that created the community, and one was called to profess that faith and those values of that community in one's life and in the public arena. For Adams, being a religious community was not simply a matter of applying to the Unitarian Universalist Association for a charter, and then doing one's own thing. The congregation needed to engage in the hard work of articulating its covenant, and forging its vision. Being a member of a congregation, for Adams, was decidedly not a do-it-yourself project. The clergy could not do the work of articulating covenant for the congregation, it was a task of the whole congregation. At a time when our self conception as religious liberals had become throughly secular and individual, Adams helped to bring us home.
Adams was a religious humanist who found deep meaning in the liberal Christian tradition. He helped renew Unitarian Universalism by exegeting the profound ideas of radical Protestantism, giving them social context and bringing them back into the center of our theological thinking.
Despite the assumption of many bloggers, the problem with Pat Robertson is not old age. I have close relations with well over a hundred Unitarian Universalists who are older than he is, and none of them talk about murder, make wild accusations about imagined foes, or claim to be misunderstood in the face of videotaped evidence. Pat Robertson has contempt for other human beings, and has no notion that something called reality is judging his words and his deeds. He has been practicing triumphalism for a long time.
Good people who age to not become Pat Robertsons.
There has been a lot of talk about how Moslem's must hold their themselves accountable for Islamic extremism, and must condemn the terrorists misuse of Islamic teachings. How are Christians responding to Pat Robertson's call to assassinate Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected president of Venezuela? Does Robertson speak for Christianity? Chuck Currie, a United Church of Christ seminarian gives a good summary of the responses and non-responses so far.
This is a teaching moment, we should not let it slip away.
I am struck by the resurgence in the peace movement in the last few weeks and its implications for Unitarian Universalism. We have lived with a contradiction in our principles and purposes for nearly thirty years, and we should at least acknowledge it, learn what it has to teach us.
We assert in the Principles and Purposes that among the sources of our living tradition we count the "[w]ords and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love." For the many, many Unitarian Universalists who have traveled to Crawford, Texas, attended vigils, wrote letters to the editor, lit candles in church, and said a prayer of gratitude, Cindy Sheehan and the other Gold Star Parents against the war are prophets. The Southern Christian Leadership Council who knows courageous witness when they see it has been mobilizing support and sending delegations to Texas.
Yet, in our Principles and Purposes we also asset that we cherish the use of the democratic process, and we might be tempted to extend that principle to selecting prophets. But if that is the case, who choose Cindy Sheehan? She is certainly an embarrassment to the political class. Those among us who see the contest between Democrats and Republicans as crucial will argue that she is not a good spokesperson for "our side." We should look to more responsible members of the opposition party, such as Hilary Clinton.
I invite you to consider a Unitarian Universalist congregation, what if they decided to call a prophet? They would take a survey, they would elect a search committee, they would look at a number of available candidates. We can be sure that they would not want someone who would cause internal dissension. She would never swear, make divisive statements about foreign policy, and her program for action would be realistic. A prophet with naïve ideas about immediate disengagement from evil, impeachment of the king, and other such pronouncements wouldn't make the cut. If we choose a prophet by the democratic process she would look a lot like a member of our Unitarian Universalist clergy - a facilitator of process, teacher of wisdom, professional institution builder, but not a prophet. (I protest that some of us retire, and become prophets, and some of us do become community ministers, but then I confess that most of us are caretakers of the unity of our congregations, a role in contradiction with pronouncing justice.)
Thanks to James Luther Adams we believe in the prophethood of all believers, and it is among the unchosen laity that we witness prophecy in our midst. In my experience as an institutional manager, when prophets arise within the congregation, they are uncommonly disruptive, they raise challenging questions, and they have a lousy sense of timing. I love my prophets, but at a distance.
So, it is good that we do not choose our prophets by any democratic process. The ancient tradition gave us the story that prophets are called by God. That explanation does have possibilities for progressives. Liberation theologians argue that God prefers the poor and powerless against the rich and the powerful. Judgement for the liberation theologian would look a lot like popular revolt.
For those of us with a more incarnate, embodied divinity, prophets arise when human beings seek to be in right relationship with each other, and find the social and political arrangements of their time to be corrupt, violent, and dehumanizing. The prophetic woman or man being an embodied person will experience these dysfunctions as immoral, as violations of their deepest values, and respond with anger. Being human they will respond emotionally, and convey that raw, irrational emotion to all who behold their witness. Rage not rational calculation is the mark of the prophet. And because of that emotional response, she will tap into the anger that lies in the hearts of many of her contemporaries who will experience the prophet speaking for their deepest values, their ultimate concerns. They will experience her as embodying their own anger and hatred for wrong doing, corruption, and misuse of power. And she will call forth many others to prophecy.
It is all so messy and so unpredictable. No well managed search committee would choose such a person. And the King will be embarrassed, and the rivals of the King will annoyed, but the spirit "bloweth where it listeth...and maketh all things new."
Image from Salt Lake 08-22-04
Once in a while, I go to church, just to go. Most of the time, I doing something, leading a service, going to a meeting, preaching. But sometimes I go, just to go. On these occasions I have been able to observe.
I went to church Sunday, and I noticed the announcements. The lay speaker was good, the music was good, the service was well put together, and well led. It was a good service, especially for August. Unitarian Universalists are not always at their best in August. I noticed the announcements, I usually don't notice the announcements. Someone announced that the goddesses would be getting together in the evening, it was a women's study group. The next person announced that the Secular Humanists, and Agnostics Group (SHAG of course) would be meeting on Tuesday. The next talked about Appreciative Inquiry discussions which were being held during the summer, all this would lead to a vision and mission process in the Autumn. The next announced that the anti racism group would not be meeting that week, but rather would meet of last Sunday of the month. And finally there was announcement that the choir was needing new singers, and the announcer suggested that that the choirs standards were not all that high, after all he was a choralist, and if he could do it, so could you.
Usually, I stand with other Unitarian Universalist ministers in opining that announcements are abomination. The members should read the back of the bulletin where it is all printed out. Only important events should be urged on the congregation as part of the worship service. Announcements I proclaim are like doing business when we have company, they are too inner, and besides they make it hard to end the service on time.
But I was observing Sunday, I was a guest of this congregation, and had no obligation to end the service on time, and no preconceived notion about how I would like the service to flow. What I noticed about the announcements on Sunday as how well they illustrated the inclusive pluralism that Richard Grigg writes about in his To Re-Enchant the World; A Philosophy of Unitarian Universalism. Grigg asks "Why are we here.?" And he answers "we are here to champion the dignity of the human person over against the dehumanizing forces of commodification. We are here to celebrate the human being's ability to discern the sacred and to stand awestruck, before Mystery But now we can add another answer to the question of why U.U.s are here to an answer that is perhaps not as immediately obvious as the first answer. Is it not our unique contribution to present to society the possibility of inclusive pluralism."
Jeff Wilson at Transient and Permanent wonders if there isn't something troubling about the distinction of "birthright" UUs as compared to UUs who have been converted from some other religion. He describes the convert as being angry with Christianity and which he says is related to the "Diehard Secular Humanist Syndrome."
This idea of the angry ex-Christian as rejectionist is an enduring image, and it may have been apt several decades ago. But based who is joining us now, I think it needs to be retired. Converts or "come inners" may be Christians searching for more liberal Christianity, Christians who have decided that they wanted a more humanistic and more universalistic religious community but are not angry at Christianity, people from a non Christian religious community that find Unitarian Universalism attractive, and finally, we have many new UUs who have never been part of any religious community at all. I have found new Unitarian Universalists much more open to searching for a religious meaning and less interested in rejecting. What all these groups have in common is the narrative of discovery, they found Unitarian Universalism.
On the other hand there are those who came to Unitarian Universalism through the agency of their parents, and who were supported by the religious education program for children of a liberal congregation, and shared the experience of Liberal Religious Youth, or Young Religious Unitarian Universalists. The experience of coming of age within Unitarian Universalism is an intense experience, people who have had that experience seek out others to share their narratives, to tell each other their common stories. I continue to experience solidarity with ex-LRYers after forty five years.
At the Convocation of Unitarian Universalist ministers held in Birmingham, Alabama held several years ago, a group of ministers who shared the experience of being brought up Unitarian Universalist got together. We rejected the term "birth right" Unitarian Universalist. Jeff is right that the term has elitist connotations. But there was another reason, if one was a child when one's parents discovered Unitarian Universalism, one has had a similar experience as someone whose family has been religious liberals for generations. The narrative of being raised UU and the narrative of discovery are radically different. When I am teaching a new members class, I share my mothers story of discovering Unitarianism as a rebellious Catholic seeking freedom, and I share the story of my spouse and partner as a parent seeking religious education for her inquisitive child, because these stories resonate with the seekers. When I want to talk to parents who are raising children within Unitarian Universalism, or to our own young people, I share the stories of my own Unitarian childhood, because these stories are closer to their experience than any "how I found Unitarian Universalism story." It is the seeker story that dominates our community faith narratives.
I think we need to be able to share our raised up UU stories, we will continue to lose young Unitarian Universalists if they never have their story told and hear others with a similar narrative tell their story. Perhaps the "elitism" that Jeff has experienced among some who use the term "birth right" UU, is a cry for recognition, recognition that could be granted without privileging their child dedication ceremonies over the new member classes by simply telling both stories.
The PBS program "Religion and Ethics" is now available as for download.
This is great for me, this program isn't available on my local PBS stations. But I also like the convenience of podcasting, I can listen to the program at my convenience. I play the programs on my long drives across Florida. The most convenient way to access the program is Apple's ITunes Music Store (available for both Macs and PCs.) Download ITunes and then go to the podcast list and subscribe to Religion and Ethics. The music store has a number of good public affairs programs, science programs, as well as religion programs, they all download automatically when I open ITunes. Unitarian Universalist congregations are beginning to use this service to distribute MP3 files of their worship services, I have a good collection of sermons from Randy Becker who has been podcasting for over a year now.
The initial program of Religion and Ethics has a good discussion on the evolution debate, including some probing around "intelligent design."
Building shelves today, got tired and decided to rummage around in some old (electronic text) files from about 12 years ago. Lo and behold, I found some old email on an ancient list (called Coffee House) which included some of our usual suspects who since they wrote those missives have gone off to theological school, finished, and have found their ministries. Lot has happened in 12 years, those who wrote on this old list that I now know as colleagues are still writing about the similar concerns.
We make big decisions, give up one life and go to back to school. The school does its job of transformation, our first settlements do their job of formation, and we continue to engage the same "great questions."
I found the web site of an interesting movement of religious liberals in the United Kingdom that embraces religious language, and is non sectarian, yet understands that all religion and all language are social constructions of human beings. It is an example of the kind of religious humanism that can embrace those who use Christian narratives, symbols, and metaphors as part of their religious expression, as well as those who prefer to use an alternative vocabulary. It differs from the implicit scientism of mid twentieth century humanism in that it sees the function of language as empowering human beings, thus religious language is a human creation that enables religious expression.
The name Sea of Faith came to designate a movement after a British television series by that name, that reported on the twin crisis of modernism and dogmatic Christianity. The name originally alluded to Matthew Arnold's classic 19th century poem Dover Beach which likened the decline of organised religion to the outgoing tide of the "sea of faith". While this movement responds to the concrete conditions of the United Kingdom, it might be of interest to North American Unitarian Universalists.
The following is a long quote for the web site:
Sea of Faith recognises that a huge and fundamental shift has taken place in the last thirty years: a shift not only in what we believe but in how we believe. We have entered a time of unprecedented thinking and rethinking, building and rebuilding, in which beliefs about belief are shaken as never before. We are exposed to other cultures, other paradigms, other religions, other politics, other ways of making art, other ways of doing science, other ways of building moral and ethical frameworks. We can no longer convince ourselves, let alone others, that our religion story is the "true" one, or that our political ism is the "correct" one - and we marvel that our culture ever had the arrogance to make such plainly nonsensical assumptions. In this sense, Sea of Faith embraces postmodernity and is postmodernist..
Sea of Faith neither abandons the many faith traditions nor seeks to create yet another competing sect. Its members are to be found in the parish church and the synagogue, in the Quaker meeting, and at the Catholic mass, as well as in all the varieties of secular life. But they know their religious practices and "truths", like everyone else's, are socially constructed, made by human communities and not laid down by gods or ghosts or denizens of a supernatural realm. So, since faith systems were man-made, created to fill certain needs at particular times in specific places, we know we can remake them for our needs, our times, our place. We can ordain gays - or abolish the priesthood: create "green" rituals - or abandon ritual: make God female - or re-fashion him/her as the symbol or imaged incarnation of wholly human values such as mercy, pity, peace and love. We see that even if the churches are crumbling, religious expression, alongside the arts, remains a valid means of rejoicing and mourning, celebrating and imagining, and firing-up the inspiration required to remake ourselves and our society. In this sense, Sea of Faith is religious.
I have just finished reading To Re - Enchant the World: A Philosophy of Unitarian Universalism. Richard Grigg, a religious studies professor from Connecticut, and a member of the Unitarian Society of New Haven, argues convincingly that Unitarian Universalist congregations accomplish the unique task of bringing members into inter-subjective relationship with many different spirituality's, and this interaction helps deepen those members own understanding and practice.
Grigg argues that Unitarian Universalist congregations practice inclusive pluralism which he explains has the potential to re-enchant the world. For more and more people in the West, secularism (which Grigg characterizes as consumerism) is disenchanting people with their world, and this is causing large scale de-moralization. Gregg explains that neither a reactionary Christendom (a return to a monolithic top down orthodoxy) or exclusive pluralism (the current religious market of mutually exclusive faith claims) provides a viable alternative to secularism, but Unitarian Universalism does and he articulates reasons why this true.
Grigg provides the first serious attempt at a theology of pluralism for Unitarian Universalism. Inclusive pluralism of the kind Grigg describes has been maturing within our healthiest Unitarian Universalist congregations for the last several decades. But it has been mischaracterized. These congregations are not engaged in some kind of shallow eclecticism (although that may exist when the leadership has no core vision of religious liberalism,) nor are Unitarian Universalists "interfaith" - we share a common faith and practice divergent spirituality's. At our best we encourage the individualization of theological perspectives and spiritual practices, and we do this in covenant community institutionalizing Francis David's prayerful hope that " we need not think alike to love alike."
I find Grigg's examination of exciting, and more perceptive about our theological diversity than the Commission on Appraisal's Engaging Our Theological Diversity. (I find that the Commission portrays our theological diversity as more of a problem than an opportunity.)
Doug Muder of Free and Responsible Search writes:
This is what moral relativism means to me: Every moral discussion takes place in a context, among a community of people who share some common language, assumptions, and values. Unlike the hypothetical examples raised by absolutists, actual moral judgments are always made in a time and a place, under the aegis of one or more moral communities. If you take a statement out of its context, it loses so much of its meaning that I probably can't say whether I agree with it or not. But in an actual situation, I'm as likely as anybody else to have a strong conviction about what is right and to take action based on that conviction.
Moral absolutists, on the other hand, believe that the words right and wrong refer to something as real and objective as height and weight. The moral properties of a situation might be hard for flawed human beings to measure or discern, but there is always a truth-of-the-matter independent of anyone's ideas, a God's-eye-view of the clear and absolute distinction between Good and Evil.
If we accept this contrast we are given two choices: relativism or absolutism.
The problem with the absolutist position is its implication that morality exists independently of human community, and presumably even the existence of humanity. All moral ideas are simply reflections of a morality that exists prior any person or group of people thinking about morality. It occurs to me that such a view assumes a transcendent God or at least an intelligent (moral) designer. Process theologians, natural theists, pan-en-theists, pantheists, and non theists might have a difficult time imagining a source of morality independent of moral individuals incorporated into moral communities.
Doug in arguing for moral relativism observes that different cultures have different moral codes, and that actual moral judgments are always made in a time and a place. We also observe that there is considerable variation between different cultures relative to morality. In a society in which the ruler has been raised to the level of divinity one has a moral obligation to obedience, and formal encomium to point of fawning. In a procedural democracy, the morality encourages a respectful engagement with ones leaders. And if morality is simply those codes of conduct that a society approves then morality for a secret policeman might involve flogging political prisoners, while a member of Amnesty International would protest the immorality of the same act. Doug discusses the extreme example of Nazi Germany, and attempts a response within the logic of relativism. Hitler led "a community of people who share some common language, assumptions, and values." How can humans outside that community judge Nazi conduct? Are those who condemn this regime simply imposing their own communities morality? Doug's answer is that we belong to the same community (of Western moral thought) as the Nazis, and we can judge the Nazis on the basis of our shared community morality.
Philocrites favorite Christian blogger Camassia critiques Doug argument from an the point of view of reasoned orthodoxy, and poses this question "culture is not monolithic. It is subject to mergers and splits, to changes and foreign influence. Therefore, I don't see how you can just point to "the community" as your authority on moral questions, and stop there. The community itself points to something beyond its changeable self as the source of its moral authority. Yes, the culture transmitted it, and on the way colored it with its own perspective, but it does not claim to be the ultimate source of it. Again, I don't see how you can reject absolutism while accepting the moral norms drawn from absolutist reasoning." We could extend the argument, if morality is the product of communities, on what authority do dissenting moralists critique their own moral community?
Is it possible that there is another way of looking at this question, a way that is avoids the theological difficulties absolutism poses for religious liberalism, while avoiding the slippery slope of relativism. It strikes me that Doug is pointing in the right direction when he writes of a common heritage of citizen's of Bush's America and Hitler's Germany. But that heritage goes deeper than Western moral thought. There are certain core moral values that are apparently commonly held by all human communities: Western moral thought didn't invent the moral prejudice against murder, theft, and deceit. Human communities share certain moral values, and at the same time different communities differ relative to other moral ideas. Homosexuality is not universally condemned in all human communities, nor is patriarchy is not a universal moral standard.
As I see it the basis for moralities, which may differ in specifics, arises from the nature of human being in community. Human individuals are formed in community and responsible human beings respond by seeking to be in right relationship to their community and to a wider set of relations as well. Human beings "by nature" need to be right relationship to their own deepest selves, to their intimate relations, to the communities that form them and sustain them, and to their cosmos. Right relationship involves authenticity, mutuality, and sustainability.
Human communities however become distorted by inequitable power relationships, by interpersonal relationships characterized by inauthentic and exploitative abuses. Often these distortions are institutionalized into moral codes. History has witnessed that members of oppressive and dysfunctional social orders have risen within their social contexts to make judgments of their own societies moral order. Moral absolutists would argue that such individuals are responding to a transcendent standard of good and evil. Doug would argue that they are being informed by a historical tradition of moral thought broader than their immediate community. But that raises the question, how does moral thought arise, and how is it transformed. Historically communities have been transformed and renewed by movements for moral renewal. New understandings of morality have arisen within communities and judged standards of moral conduct that served narrow interests, and reactionary social arrangements.
I suggest that there is no absolute standard for human morality prior to human being in community on the one hand, but on the other hand morality can not be reduced to the prevailing mores of a given community. I believe that morality arises from human being in community seek to be right relationship with their own authentic selves and with the wider cosmos.
Dover Beach - a poem by Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm tonight.
۬The tide is full, the moon lies fair
۬Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
۬Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
۬Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
۬Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
۬Only, from the long line of spray
۬Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
۬Listen! you hear the grating roar
۬Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
۬At their return, up the high strand,
۬Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
۬With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
۬The eternal note of sadness in. ۬
۬Sophocles long ago
€¨Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought
۬Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
۬Of human misery; we
۬Find also in the sound a thought,
۬Hearing it by this distant northern sea.۬
۬The Sea of Faith
۬Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
۬Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
۬But now I only hear
۬Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
۬Retreating, to the breath
۬Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
۬And naked shingles of the world.
۬Ah, love, let us be true
۬To one another! for the world, which seems
۬To lie before us like a land of dreams,
۬So various, so beautiful, so new,
۬Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
۬Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
۬And we are here as on a darkling plain
۬Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
۬Where ignorant armies clash by night.
The poet seeing the ebbing of the sea at Dover Beach, alludes to ebbing of Religious Faith that he sees ebbing in England as a consequence of the collapse of Christendom. Does the Sea of Faith flow again, will the cycle of the sea reverse itself at low tide and give us again a rising tide? Arnold does not envision this in his poem, and relative to Christianity there has not been a rising Sea of Faith in the United Kingdom.
What does this mean for Unitarian Universalists in North America? We have experience many of the same cultural, intellectual and social changes that the United Kingdom has experienced. Many North Americans have lost faith with traditional and authoritarian Christianity. Yet either because of a more flexible polity among the churches, or a peculiar national psyche, the does not seem to be an ebbing of religiosity so much as upheaval of conventions of thought and affiliations.
Unitarian Universalists have experience in the last decades of ministering both to those who have experienced a loss of faith, and to those who are seeking spiritual renewal, I believe that this will be true in the future as well, I believe that the Christendom is in crisis and a new spiritual and religious paradigm is rising. I believe that Unitarian Universalism has the potential to give form and substance to this new religious paradigm, but that will require that we cease to consider the building of one's theology to be a private affair, and begin to work together for the sake of our "the re-enchantment of our world." *
I am quoting from the title of a To Re-Enchant The World: A Philosophy of Unitarian Universalism By Richard Grigg. I will comment further on Grigg's book after I have finished reading it.
Philocrites asks "Do Unitarian Universalists have morals?" Morals are our ideas about what is right and wrong. My take on the question is that in the main Unitarian Universalists share in the same morals as most people in the dominant culture. We sure share the short list:
Murder is immoral. Stealing is immoral. Deceit is immoral. Abuse of children is immoral. Building the short list is not that hard.
Morals become deeply ingrained through practice. Families and peers teach morals and encourage people to practice those morals. They will be discarded as just a foolish notion if individuals exist in a social group that routinely disregards these common moral codes. Many of us remember our adolescent peer group that encouraged the practice of deceit, lying to parents and teachers was cool, telling the truth was snitching.
Churches don't create morals, they provide a framework for integrating morals into a persons over all philosophy of life, or religious perspective. The sectarian religious communities (the Amish for example) are able to maintain alternative moral codes by creating alternative cultures. I don't see liberal churches working to isolate their people from the general culture and requiring them to live a distinct moral code, but liberal churches are part of network of family, peer groups, schools, work groups, arts and entertainment media that work together to reinforce each other in sustaining and maintaining moral codes that may be variance from other such networks in society.
We might share a moral value that all people should be treated with respect for their individuality. While that is not a unique value to Unitarian Universalists, or to liberals, we tend to provide more encouragement to making it real than churches that practice homophobia. I am old enough to recall when the taboos against same sex relationships went unchallenged in Unitarian Universalist churches. But beginning in the 1970s, we consciously taught an alternative moral code that embraced differences in sexual orientation. We did some serious soul searching and re-education. Many liberals did as well. We still have members who announce they are leaving because the UU church has become gay! Keith Kron reports that in many of our congregations become anxious that we are becoming a gay church when ten percent of the members are not heterosexual. Still some work to do.
I can think of other examples in my own lifetime where we have transformed our moral thinking relative to dominant culture.
I have lived in Boston, New York City, San Francisco Bay, Austin, Montreal. Those cities all have large networks to sustain a liberal moral value orientation. I have also lived in Evansville, Indiana, and Tampa, Florida to name two places. In these communities there were networks that sustained liberal values, but the dominant networks were sustaining a set of moral values that were in variance with most of the members of the Unitarian Universalist congregation. There is more "us against them" in a context where we are smaller minority, where our supporting networks are weaker.
When Matthew Gatheringwater posted his essay "Tipping Points" over at Coffee Hour, he identified himself as a religious humanist. He referred to an essay by Mason Olds for a definition of religious humanism. When I read Olds, I believed that the Olds definition was too narrow, and that a broader definition might include some Unitarian Universalists who would experience themselves as excluded by the more narrow definition offered by Olds.
Today, Shawn Anthony at Lo-Fi Tribe offered a description of religious humanism this morning, prompting me try to draft something that reflects my hope for an inclusive, yet bounded definition.
Since all theology is autobiographical, I will share my personal perspective. I have been a Unitarian Universalist since the merger, having been raised a Unitarian with a liberal Christian take on Unitarianism. I have been formed by Cherokee spirituality. I would define my own stance as Christian humanist and profoundly "earth centered." One might gather from the above that I am suspicious of the hyper-rationalism and advocacy of a brave new world free of superstition attitude that is too often associated with humanism.
My take on religious humanism.
Human beings in relationship with other human beings created the religions of the world as responses to their experience of awe and mystery of the cosmos, and their experience of enchantment with the earth. Through their religions; human beings articulated stories, developed symbols, established institutions, and elaborated codes of right relationship for both their social order and for their individual lives. Thus the religions of the world are the gifts of the generations of the past, and it is each generations responsibility to both benefit from this wisdom and contribute their own wisdom to the future.
Images of God, the Abyss, the Sacred Other, the Holy and other ideas concerning the divine are products of the human imagining, and human beings have a responsibility for those images. Many religious humanists believe that these images point toward a reality beyond themselves, and many other religious humanists are skeptical of such claims, but religious humanists unite in rejecting the dualism that divides the cosmos into supernatural and natural.
Idolatry, for the religious humanist is worshipping that which human beings have fashioned as the holy, and too often results in the use of that manufactured god image as a tool to gain power over other human beings. Religious humanists are critical of images of the divine that dehumanize other people, that devaluate the natural world, that justify oppression, that elevate images of one way of being human over others to divine status, and that insist that divine has uniquely revealed truth to one religious group over others.
A critical stance has been central to the humanist orientation since its inception, religious humanism incorporates this critical way in its approach to religion. But criticism must also be directed at science and scholarship itself, which has too often been used as a tool by privileged and powerful elites to rationalize their own points of view. Scientism is a form of idolatry.
Many religious humanists believe in committing themselves to a particular religious tradition, and that engaging in its spiritual practices deepens and enhances their spiritual life. We know of religious humanists who participate and contribute to Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and other historical wisdom traditions. Other religious humanists have committed themselves to a religious journey that seeks to be open to many sources of wisdom, these religious humanists shape a spirituality that is unique to their own experience.
In the covenant that helps define our association of Unitarian Universalist congregations we read that one of the sources of our faith is "direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder...that moves us to a renewal of the spirit." It has been my observation that one of the best kept secrets in any human community is how many of people have had a "direct experience" of mystery. We have an insight into the meaning of life, we experience some awe inspiring revelation of the granduer of nature, we have an "ah ha" or something happens and we discover a depth and meaning in our lives that we never knew before. But what do we do now?
We come to church hoping that somehow, sometime the church would help us understand what "these experiences" mean, somehow we can incorporate these experiences of mystery and wonder into our lives. Sometimes we can, sometimes its a poem, or bible reading, or a particular line in a sermon. Sometimes its an anthem, or a line from a hymn.
Gordon B. McKeeman has created what we might adopt as our guide to being with in relation to mystery. I include his insights below:
How does one address a mystery?
Cautiously -- let us go cautiously, then, to the end of our certainty, to the boundary of all we know, to the rim of uncertainty, to the perimeter of the unknown which surrounds us.
Reverently -- let us go with a sense of awe, a feeling of approaching the powerful holy whose lightning slashes the sky, whose persistence splits concrete with green sprouts, whose miracles are present in every place and moment.
Hopefully -- out of our need for wholeness in our own lives, the reconciliation of mind and heart, the conjunction of reason and passion, the intersection of the timeless with time.
Quietly -- for no words will explain the inarticulate or summon the presence that is always present even in our absence.
But what shall I say?
Anything -- any anger, any hope, any fear, any joy, any request, any word that comes from the depth of being addressed to Being itself -- or, perhaps, nothing, no complaint, no request, no entreaty, no thanksgiving, no praise, no blame, no pretense of knowing or of not knowing.
Simply be in the intimate presence of mystery, unashamed -- unadorned -- unafraid.
And at the end say -- Amen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:
God offers the choice between truth and repose. Take which you please - you can never have both.
In our post modern world, where we speak more of truths, than the Truth, perhaps repose might have its own truth to teach us. I assume that Emerson is assuming that seeking truth takes constant effort, and the results are mostly disturbing, and repose would require us to adopt a less ambitious attitude. So for Emerson, if repose were to be achieved, we would need to relax the free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and just relax. This Emerson found hard to do, thus he gives us his proverb.
I am not convinced. I will admit that one may find it hard to do both at the same time, but some preacher once wrote "there is a time for everything under the sun." And while his list didn't include repose and truth seeking, he did have some wisdom about timing.
The atomic bomb named "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima by the Enola Gay, a Boeing B-29 bomber, at 8:15 in the morning of August 6, 1945. This watch was on the person of one of the victims.
Christians speak of the crucifixion of the rabbi Jesus as a turning point in history. I am more of an Easter man myself, but I agree. Something old ended, something new came into being.
I would only add, history has a way of turning, making radical turns. Once it was possible to speak of democracy versus totalitarianism, and science versus superstition. After Hiroshima, such ideas no longer had the clarity and power that they once held.
۬
The meandering thread begun by Martin Gatheringwater over at Coffee Hour continues to generate much commentary. Gatheringwater's original post included some anecdotes about a Christian who had left the Unitarian movement back in the 1940s, and some unloving remarks made by some students at his school. The thrust of his essay was a question; given that, the Unitarian and now the Unitarian Universalist movement has undergone significant changes, what would be the change that would cause you to leave?
A number of threads within the thread emerged including the use of religious language, member retention, and marketing to the spiritual (or non spiritual) marketplace. It was this last thread that motivated me to write this afternoon. There was an implication that the UUA was targeting Christians, New agers, or other religiously inclined folks in its marketing efforts. I have read this before, it has been written (by several bloggers) that the so called "language of reverence" discussion was really about a marketing ploy to attract liberal Christians.
I am convinced that we seem to be in the business of creating "urban myths." The UUA's current marketing effort is the Uncommon Denomination, I fail to see how this effort can be read as an effort to attract spiritual seekers of any sort; whether Christian, pagan, or new age. I have criticized the idea of an Uncommon Denomination for elitism, but the target audience is "those looking for an alternative."
I think I will collect "urban myths," and while I value real myths, I think "urban myths" need to be exposed as the products of gossip. Some I have heard lately are really startling. One has it that the majority of UU ministers are theists! No evidence is presented, but it asserted to be the case. I think not.
At the last UUMA convocation, a large workshop was conducted by Diane Miller. She asked the ministers in attendance to self identify and move to discussion groups based on the following theological orientations: theist, pan-en-theist, pantheist, mystical agnostic, and non theist humanist. Those who selected theism constituted the smallest group, those who selected pan-en-theism were by far the largest. The others all had substantial numbers sitting at the tables.
I believe this kind of self identification based on multiple choices would provide a more accurate understanding of UU clerical theological orientations than lumping everyone who uses the word God into the theist category. If the non- theists don't know the difference between a pan-en-theist, a pantheist, and a theist, they should learn. It will improve the conversation.
I think I heard a few other UU urban myths, I will share them in time.
Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.
Simone Weil (1909€“1943)
Simone Weil who grew up in a secular Jewish family, had experience with Marxism, the labor movement, pacifism, and humanism, and in her mid-thirties choose to become radical Catholic. We might imagine that for Weil her use of the term 'grace' flowed from simple theism and Catholic dogmatism, but on closer reading of of her writing, I have found an advocate for a God that is incarnate in the creation and that holds all creatures in unconditional high regard, a God both natural and divine that supports our human enterprise by enabling us in the pursuit of truth, beauty, liberty and equality.
In the seventeenth century Europeans, and those who followed their intellectual lead began to make a distinction between the perceiving subject, and the world in which we live and move and have our being. The world became an object, rather than the creation of divine beneficence. If the universe was a material machine, if God was an anachronism, what was the source and inspiration of human aspirations? For Simone Weil, the choice seemed to be between a secularized humanism, or taking the radical step for Jew and communist, and becoming a Catholic convert, albeit a theologically independent one.
If we see our world as an object, as a thing to be manipulated, then humans themselves must be the authors of our values of truth, beauty, liberty, and equality. And if we make up of our values, then it follows that our values themselves become objects of our minds, inventions of our social situation, fantasies of our desire. How do we work for an object of our imagination, for an idea? We work to achieve that object. We engage in service, in protests, in institution building, in education, and other means toward our end. All of these are good and worthy pursuits. But in and by themselves all that effort results in what the Christians call "works righteousness." We take credit for success, even when our contribution to the success was only partial. We become frustrated with failure, even when the failure was due to circumstances beyond our control. We divide up into political camps, and make enemies out of our opponents.
I rebel against the choice, for me the cosmos is not foreign to our human being, not an object simply to be understood and conquered by our technology, but is our source and our sustainer. Native American theological thinkers such as George Tinker have helped me to understand the spiritual dimension to what Unitarian Universalists attest to in the seventh principle when we say "respect for the independent web of all existence of which we are a part." But to be in relation with the nature, with the cosmos takes a commitment, a leap of faith, I needed to go beyond affirming a principle to living a relationship. Understanding that, and living my life with that orientation has made a difference in perception. I have come to know existentially that we live in sacred being, in an enchanted universe, in a natural process that transcends our materialism and is not indifferent to human aspirations. Simone Weil struggled with the same impoverished intellectual tradition as Jean Paul Sartre, and she made a different choice.
This art by Loren Williams is from the back cover of the latest issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. Loren Williams is a professor of biology and chemistry at Georgia Tech, and has published a prior version of the table on the re Discovery Institute's website. I found it on the blogsite I am a Christian Too!
There is a joke that was very popular several decades ago among Unitarian Universalists. It seems that there was a Unitarian Universalist who had died and was going to heaven, when he came to a fork in the road. There was a directional sign to guide the traveler, if he took one fork he would continue to heaven. The other fork led to a discussion about heaven. The Unitarian Universalist did not hesitate, he proceeded to the discussion.
This joke elicted the laughter that comes from a surprising self recognition. Unitarian Universalists do like to discuss, to engage with others in examination of a topic from all points of view.
But our delight in this joke also indicated an unease, discussions about religious topics are not the same thing having religious experience oneself. So the discussion about heaven might just have a discussion about spirituality, prayer, mediation, or inner peace. There is a difference between thinking about topics, and sharing ideas of religious concern, and actual religious experience.
The joke was still current when our association of congregations came up with a new statement of purposes for its by-laws, the Principles and Purposes asserted that The Living Tradition We Share Draws From Many Sources:
(and the first source reads)
Direct experience of that transcending wonder,
affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit.
We appreciate that "prophetic women and men" have had spiritual experiences, transformative experiences which led them speak words and perform deeds which in turn challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion and the transforming power of love. We appreciate the wisdom from the world's religions and Jewish, Christian, Humanist and Earth - centered teachings but the first source of our living tradition we declared was direct spiritual and religious experience - not acquired wisdom, and not exchanges of opinions in discussion groups. Philosophers have always noted that there are two ways of knowing; there is direct. personal, experienced knowing, and there is the knowing that comes from thinking on experience (reflection), hearing stories about experience (exchange), and exchanging opinions about experience (critique.) All of the latter are varieties of "knowing about."
As I see it, we must learn to combine these two ways of knowing. It is good to examine and discuss, to ponder and criticize. But there is a kind of knowledge that comes from experience, and one who does not have that experience can not have the kind of knowledge that experience yields.
Today, we have a new appreciation of metaphor, and symbol, even in our jokes. I suspect for many Unitarian Universalists in 2005, the choice that was presented by that sign at the fork in the road would not be as obvious.
