"STRENGTHS FROM UNITY WITHIN DIVERSITY"

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, September 15, 2002

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

Every now and then, it is important to be reminded that the United States was originally conceived as, and continues to be, an experiment. The founders of this nation knew that a democratic government, such as they imagined, had never before been established, and barely before even been imagined. Monarchs and despots were all the world had previously known of government, in which the authority for governing was vested entirely in the power wielded by the ruler. In creating the government they did, the founders began a great experiment testing whether or not it is possible for the authority for government be vested in the people themselves.

The experiment is still in process. It began with some very serious flaws and mistakes that later had to be corrected -- as much as possible, at least. The experiment was blind to various forms of oppression - such as the slave trade of Africans, the virtual genocide of Native Americans, and the disenfranchisement of women. Such mistakes nearly destroyed the experiment at various times, and corrections had to be made for the experiment to have any chance of success.

During the first century of this experiment, a tidal wave of immigrants from all countries of the world re-defined our self-understanding. We began to see ourselves as a refuge of freedom for different people of different backgrounds. The American experiment took on a new dimension. Not only was this to be an experiment about democracy - about whether power can be placed in the hands of the people - but it is also an experiment in diversity. We are an experiment about whether a society can not only include people with diverse backgrounds of nationality, race, and religion, but also whether our nation and our society is enhanced and enriched by that diversity. With the possible exception of Canada, ours is the only nation in the world that is conducting such an experiment on a large scale.

The hypothesis that is being tested by this experiment is that diversity is a strength rather than a weakness in society. It is perhaps one of the most difficult experiments ever undertaken, but so far, with numerous obstacles along the way, we remain confident that it will succeed.

This has been a difficult week for many of us. We have all anticipated the anniversary of September 11. It was not possible this week to escape the painful memories of a year ago. Every newspaper, nearly every television show, and numerous personal conversations all transported us back to that time last year when the world as we knew it seemed to explode into many pieces right before our eyes.

This has been a time for reflection, not just about the wounds our world received, but also about the what we as a society have learned from this shocking, shared experience. It time to reflect on how we can use this experience for our own growth and advancement.

Many have pointed out, and continue to highlight, all the powerful stories of courage and heroism and compassion that have emerged from the dusty ruins of the attacks. I am continually amazed to hear more and more such stories that I had not heard before.

It seems to me, though, that above all else, the most important positive outcome from this shared experience is the sense of unity our country has felt, unlike anything I've experienced in my life. We have all become more closely united to the extent we share the experience of being threatened.

That sense of unity, however, has little meaning unless it is also tied to the principles on which our country is founded. That sense of unity must be understood, for example, within the context of our great national experiment about diversity.

Nothing I can imagine could have more effectively served the purpose of making us realize just how much we need to accept one another as people, and not let differences become divisive of our society. Those who planned and carried out the attacks were motivated in part by ethnic and religious bigotry and hatred. Among the most encouraging stories in the aftermath of September the 11^th are the ones that tell of kindness and understanding between different races and religions - kindness that wasn't there before. When we hear those stories it is as if people have in the back of their mind the terrorists and their intolerance, and they are making a statement by their reaching out to others. They are making a statement that: I am not like them, and their hatred is not going to win! Bigotry will not win!

I focus today on diversity, and what happens to a society that embraces diversity as a valued principle. This, I think, is becoming increasingly understood in many dimensions of life. Ecologists, for example, speak of the value of "bio-diversity," and point out that within nature, environments which include wide varieties of species of plants and animals are far healthier and stronger - much less fragile - than environments which have only a few different species. Diversity can bring a strength of unity to an environment.

It also occurs to me that this has, for a long time, been an important theme within our Unitarian Universalist heritage. As a religious movement that does not require a creedal belief, we tend to encourage a diversity of belief among our membership. More often than not, we look upon that diversity as a blessing, as a strength. And it is.

The Unitarian Universalist tradition has long held religious toleration to be a major religious value. "Tolerance" is one of the three historic principles of what has sometimes been called the "trinity" of Unitarian principles: "freedom, reason, and tolerance." In a tradition that makes no demands for allegiance to a specific creed, tolerance of differing opinions is logically a foundation for our religious community.

In recent years, it has been observed that the world "tolerance" can carry with it some more subtle negative connotations. To "tolerate" something sometimes implies a less than enthusiastic appreciation for it. If you tell me that you "tolerate" my singing, I have a pretty good idea of how you feel about it, and it's not good. Toleration of a person's religious ideas can display a similar set of judgments. The famous Act of Religious Toleration in England in 1689 ended some persecution but not discrimination against religious minorities. With that Act, the government and the Church of England said to the dissenters, in effect, "we will suffer your presence among us."

In recent years there has been a shift in the language, and in fact a shift in thinking, from talking about "tolerance" of others and other ideas, to a "respecting" of diversity, even a welcoming and "encouraging" of diversity. "Celebrating" diversity would even be acceptable. I see this as a healthy transformation in our thinking.

This morning I want to propose a philosophical and psychological and even theological rationale for respecting diversity.

Why should we be open and accepting of - even to the extent of seeking out - people who are different from us? Is it because it is the nice and polite way to be? Is it because we want to be just and fair with other people? Does the Golden Rule or some other ethical principle apply here, so that we must be accepting of them because we want them to be accepting of us?

I answer: "none of the above." Sure we want to be fair and polite and just and nice in our behavior, but none of these is the best reason for openness and acceptance of those who are different from us. The best reason has more self interest than that.

You see, the only way that we or any other human being can grow and mature is to be challenged in what we believe and in how we live and in what we value. And the only way we are challenged is to engage in dialogue with people who are different from us and sometimes even think differently from us. The result of such dialogue is either to clarify and reaffirm what we believe, or to refine, revise, or change our beliefs. In either case, we are better for having this interchange.

Some of you may remember that not long after coming to All Souls as your minister, I decided to give a sermon revealing the answer to the question of the meaning of life. (You do remember the meaning of life, don't you?) I don't give pop quizzes on my sermons, but I suspect a few of you may have been distracted in the last few years - what with war and economic crises and other things to think about - that you may have forgotten the answer to the question of the meaning of life.

The meaning of life I said then, and I say now, only slightly with my tongue in my cheek, is conversation. It's a simple answer, but not as simple as it first appears. Life is a conversation in which we learn from each other and from our experiences. As with any good conversation, we contribute to it, but we gain far more than we give. Each relationship and each experience contributes to our conversation and thereby our learning about life. If we determine there is no more for us to learn, then the conversation is over and, in any meaningful sense, so is our life. Certainly our personal growth is over when the conversation stops.

What I would add this morning is a straightforward observation that conversation becomes boring and meaningless if we are talking only with those who are just like us or who agree with us. The best conversation and the best learning comes from those who are different from us, including those who challenge us with disagreement.

This metaphor about conversation is my simple and unsophisticated way of saying that we need those who are different from us or who think differently from us, and this is the basis for our principle of tolerance -- or better yet of honoring diversity. Simply put, we need diversity if we are to grow and mature. We need to do more than merely tolerate it.

For those of you who prefer a more sophisticated metaphor than mine about needing diversity, I have one. I offer you the philosophy of Henry Nelson Wieman, a professor of philosophy of religion at the University of Chicago during the 1930s and 40s, a student of John Dewey at Harvard, one of the most respected 20th century theologians, and - not incidentally - a Unitarian.

Wieman built a philosophy and a theology around what he called "the creative interchange" and growth that happens in human interaction. Beginning with the study of organic evolution (which was still a somewhat new science in his student days), Wieman asked the question about the evolution of a person's ideas and beliefs.

Evolution, Wieman suggested, is a creative process. In the course of evolutionary change, something new, something novel, something creative and original has occurred. Through the process of random variation or mutation, the product of evolution is not entirely explainable by the sum of its parts. The whole is something greater than that which preceded it. It is in this sense that evolution is a creative process.

On an even grander scale, Wieman would say, the evolution of human thought is the product of creative human interaction. Our ideas and value systems take monumental leaps simply because we are able to interact with one another and share our thinking. Deeply imbedded in the very nature of human relationships is the creative seed that allows for human growth and maturity. Wieman wrote a dozen or so books based on this one insight. Here is how he explained it in one of them:

"The creative interchange is a process in relationship in which individuals express themselves truly and fully to one another; in which each welcomes and seeks to understand the undisguised individuality of the other; each understands the view held by the other and absorbs [that understanding] into a personal view. In this way, each expands and enriches the fullness of personal experience and increases the depth of reality which enters into personal consciousness."

"Learning in depth means learning with the whole self so far as the self has attained wholeness. It also means learning from the whole self of...other[s]...."

The very process of human learning, from the infant who learns the difference between hot and cold to the aging person who learns about the fragile nature of the human body, these learnings are all the product of creative interchange between a person and the environment: creative in the sense that the learning is somehow greater than the mere facts that are learned. The most dynamic interchange, and one with the potential for the greatest creative growth, is not person and environment, but person to person, idea to idea, heart to heart. In discussing the idea of a creative human community, Wieman says this:

"[Community] includes both intellectual understanding of one another and the feeling of one another's feelings, the ability to correct and criticize one another understandingly and constructively. Increase in genuine community, which is not mere increase in backslapping geniality, will include... discernment of illness and evil in one another."

There have been, I suppose, a hundred or more books written over the years attempting to explain Henry Nelson Wieman's idea of creative interchange. To my mind, it says this: we need diversity if we are to grow and mature.

In his book The Different Drum, popular writer M. Scott Peck suggests that it is only through our associations with other people that individuals can become complete. Here is part of what he said:

"We are called to wholeness and, simultaneously, to recognize our incompleteness, called both to individuation and to interdependence. The problem - indeed the utter failure -- of the "ethic" of rugged individualism is that it incorporates only half of our humanity.... It denies entrely the other part of the human story: that we can never fully get there, and that we are, of necessity, in our uniqueness, imperfect creatures who need each other."

In other words: we need diversity of people if we are to grow and mature.

So far, I know, all this sounds very easy. All we have to do is accept one another in our differences, to celebrate our diversity, and life will be whole and just and fair. But you and I know that "accepting" those who are different from us - much less "respecting" them - is often more difficult to do than to affirm. And there are several reasons for this.

Take, for example, the religious diversity within Unitarian Universalism.

Unitarian Universalist commitment to tolerance (or to acceptance of diversity) has always been, I think, one of the most difficult of our principles to implement. This principle is riddled with obstacles to its fulfillment.

Yes, we do have diversity. In this room one can find the usual spectrum of Unitarian Universalist belief: theists and atheists are represented here. Christians and humanists, too. There are Buddhists and mystics and those aligned with movements such as eco-spirituality and feminist spirituality, and a variety of brands of New Age metaphysics. Maybe there's a Zoroastrian or something equally exotic. And of course, we have quite a number of just plain searchers with no particular label.

Diversity we have. But sometimes I wonder how much those of us who wear one label really believe that those of us who wear other labels actually have something to offer from which we can benefit. To the extent that we do not remain open to genuine conversation with those who differ, we have shifted away from respecting diversity, and gone back to mere "toleration" of each other.

It is similar to the broader sense of diversity in society. It is one thing to say that we tolerate and recognize the broad spectrum of races and nationalities and religious backgrounds. It has far deeper significance to seek out people who are different because we can learn from them.

The courage to learn from others necessarily involves the courage to engage in respectful disagreement. It seems to me that we lose significant opportunity for personal growth when we do avoid disagreement.

There is an art to disagreement, I think, and many of us hesitate to practice it, whether in this community, or among other friends, or with fellow workers, or with family. This art of disagreement has something to do with a sometimes fine line between disagreeing and being disagreeable.

I can think of two cases in which disagreements seem to become unavoidably disagreeable, two cases in which disagreement crosses the line of acceptability and civility.

The first case is when an intolerant or bigoted opinion is expressed. In the case of intolerance or bigotry, honoring diversity is neither easy nor even sometimes appropriate. I find I can say to racists or anti-semites or religious bigots, "I respect your right to your opinion," but I am unable to respect the opinion itself. It is also a strain to respect the person who expresses such opinions. I can learn from them, in a reactive sense, and they can challenge me to grow and mature I suppose, but not in a way that involves honoring or respecting their views.

Intolerance and bigotry are always and everywhere disagreeable. Though sometimes it arises from ignorance rather than malice, it shows how complicated the simple principle of "tolerance" or "honoring diversity" can be in actual practice.

There is a second, and probably more common, way in which disagreements become disagreeable. This happens, I think, whenever disagreements become personal conflicts, whenever the target of disagreement becomes the person rather than the idea the person is expressing. Here the art of disagreement demands careful practice.

When disagreement becomes personalized, that is directed at the person rather than the person's ideas, the creative interchange breaks down, the conversation ends, and there is very little we can learn from one another in our diversity. The art of disagreement, I think, means paying attention to the line that separates these two.

For example, when I say the terrorist attacks of September 11 brought our country together in an unprecedented sense of unity, it was a unity that transcended political opinion. Yet our country remains divided in many areas.

There is in our nation, broad disagreement, for example, about the President's proposal to invade Iraq. I can feel the disagreements in the air. As this conversation continues, especially in communities like ours, it is important to remember the Art of Disagreeing means not to personalize the disagreement.

The point of diversity, when it comes to differing opinions, is to be able to interact respectfully, approaching the conversation with the expectation that the other person has something to teach me. To approach the other person as an object, as someone who must be persuaded toward my own point of view, is to miss entirely the value of interaction of diverse opinions, and turn healthy disagreements into disagreeableness.

Disagreement can become disagreeable, and it takes practice and intentionality to make the distinction. Yet this is no reason to avoid disagreement, for it is through our encounter with others that we become more whole. And this is the rationale -- religious, philosophical, and psychological -- for accepting and celebrating diversity within the human community.

It is my conviction that there is only one thing, really, that makes human beings grow and mature, and that is being challenged: being challenged in what they believe and in how they live and in what they value. The only way in which this can happen is for us to take advantage of the challenges life presents and the blessings of diversity our country offers. This is the only way for us to grow as individuals and as a nation, and it is also the only way for the great experiment of America to succeed: to find strengths from unity within diversity.