UNITARIAN TRINITIES: FREEDOM, REASON, TOLERANCE

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, March 16, 2003

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

Today is my second attempt to define what I hesitatingly am calling "Unitarian Trinities." Last week I spoke of a trinity of people who strongly influenced our movement in its early years: William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Theodore Parker. Today I speak of a trinity of principles that have characterized our history: freedom, reason, and tolerance. By identifying TWO trinities instead of one, I hope I can escape the charge that I am, in fact, an unwitting "Trinitarian." Fortunately, I have no idea about the parallel term for "trinity," when one speaks of six rather than three. (As far as I know, the question has never been raised on Who Wants to be a Millionaire or Jeopardy.)

Actually, I have had second thoughts about singling out these three principles. We Unitarian Universalists resist any attempts to be defined, and some feel that identifying even these three ideas comes too close to a "creed." I should begin, then, by commenting on what role these principles play in our movement.

These three principles are not "beliefs" in any sense resembling traditional religious "beliefs." That is, if someone asks, "What do Unitarian Universalists believe?" the response that, "we believe in freedom, reason, and tolerance," would be misleading. Our relationship to these principles is not so much one of "belief in" as it is "commitment to."

These three principles were first identified by Earl Morse Wilbur in his two volume study of Unitarianism stretching over almost 600 years of history. In over a thousand pages of text, Wilbur looked at Unitarianism in Reformation France and Eastern Europe, Enlightenment England, and Revolutionary United States; he discovered that, though each had its own characteristic theological beliefs, all forms of Unitarianism shared commitment to these three principles. Wilbur himself saw these as something different from "Unitarian belief." In his concluding section, from which we read earlier this morning, he said this:

"Freedom, reason and tolerance. . . are not the final goals to be aimed at in religion, but only conditions under which the true ends may best be attained. The ultimate ends proper to religious movement are two, personal and social; the elevation of personal character, and the perfecting of the social organism, and the success of a religious body may best be judged by the degree to which it attains these ends." (Earl Morse Wilbur: A History of Unitarianism, vol. 2, p. 487).

Freedom, reason, and tolerance are "the conditions under which" we pursue the true ends of religion. This is what distinguishes Unitarian Universalism from other religions.

It appears to be rare in the Western World for religions to practice under the conditions of freedom, reason, and tolerance. Far too rare, indeed. When religions require creedal affirmations, for example, they deny freedom. When religions insist that all beliefs conform to some scripture, rather than conform to reason or common sense, they are not operating under a principle of reason. When religions claim the exclusivity of their view, and label those who disagree with them as "heretics," they do not practice tolerance.

To suggest that religion can be free, reasonable, and tolerant is a bold and risky assertion. Nevertheless, that has been, and continues to be, our aspiration.

But let me come right to the point: it is difficult to define these principles usefully, and doubly difficult to practice them consistently. It is a major accomplishment to be able to say that most Unitarian Universalists agree on anything. But it is my experience that we do all assent to these principles. The problem is that we disagree on what they mean, or more importantly, on how they are effectively applied. .

Each principle has its place in our tradition, and at times we have serious problems in applying them. Each principle has problems; indeed, they have deep problems, so deep that it seems virtually impossible to apply them with any degree of consistency. Some argue that these principles are so problematic in application that they are, in effect, meaningless. I think not.

"Freedom" refers to the right of each individual to pursue his or her own search for truth and meaning in religion. From our earliest history, Unitarians have opposed creeds - statements of belief that demand assent from all believers. Churches that deny the right of the individual to dissent in belief do so at the cost of denying progress in ideas. One of my favorite early statements of freedom of religious belief comes from Jonathan Mayhew, writing in the 1740s. He referred to "freedom of belief" as the "right of private judgment," and said this:

"(The right of private judgment) is given by God and by nature. . . and no one has the right to deprive another of it, under a notion that he will make ill use of it, and fall into erroneous opinions. We may as well pick our neighbor's pocket, for fear he should spend his money in debauchery, as take from him his right of judging for himself and chusing(sic) his religion, for fear he should judge amiss and abuse his liberty.

What could possibly be problematic about this principle of freedom? The problem, stated simply, is implied in the question: are UUs free to believe anything they want to believe? Or, are there any limits to what UUs are free to believe?

The late Bishop James Pike, a liberal Episcopalian priest with some knowledge of and sympathy for Unitarian Universalists, once commented on our principle of freedom saying, "theoretically at least, I can be a cannibal and still be a Unitarian Universalist."

This points to the core of the problem. We are free to be a theist or an atheist or an agnostic, we can identify ourselves as a Christian or a Buddhist or a Jew or a free thinker or a secular humanist or a mystic, or any of dozens of other religious perspectives. But are we committed enough to the principle of freedom to allow a Unitarian Universalist to be a cannibal or a Nazi or Mafia hit-man or a Klan member? Is a Unitarian Universalist free to believe in Hell or original sin or slavery. Or for that matter, are we as UUs free to believe that the earth is flat or that 2+2=5? So we are left with the question, "does freedom mean that we can believe anything we want to believe, and still honestly be counted as a Unitarian Universalist?

I think not. But that is not an adequate solution to the dilemma. While it is easy to affirm freedom in principle, it tests our conviction to apply it in practice.

The principle of "reason" has similar limitations. As with freedom, it is the application of reason to religion that distinguishes us from many other religions. The principle of reason represents the issue of religious authority. I know of no other religion that claims to use reason as its central authority. In most cases, churches claim the authority for belief either from their holy scriptures, or from church traditions and decrees. Your beliefs must first and foremost conform to scripture or church doctrine, and only secondarily, if at all, be tested by reason.

Our use of reason in religion has been a hallmark of our approach. Last week, I spoke about how William Ellery Channing shocked the established Christian churches when he said that even the Bible should be subject to the tests of reason. In the 1820s, Channing defended Unitarianism as a legitimate Christian religion, and he wrote this about reason in Unitarian Christianity:

"If I could not be a Christian without ceasing to be rational, I should not hesitate as to my choice. I feel myself bound to sacrifice to Christianity property, reputation, life; but I ought not to sacrifice to any religion that reason which lifts me above the brute and constitutes me a (human being). I can conceive of no sacrilege greater than to prostrate or renounce the highest faculty which we have derived from God. In doing so we offer violence to the divinity within us."

At minimum, Unitarian Universalists affirm that reason is the most reliable guide we have to truth, and that all other sources are subject to the tests of reason.

But as with freedom, there are problems and limitations to the principle of reason. Not the least of the problems is that there is no agreement on what reason is. Is reason nothing more than logic? Is it inference and deduction, a mathematical form of argumentation? Some say it is. Or is reason, as Emerson and the transcendentalists argued, the human capacity of insight and intuition? Some say it is. For example, the transcendentalists often compared reason with conscience. They called conscience "moral reason," that is, an internal form of insight into right and wrong. They suggested that intellectual reason operates similarly, an internal form of insight into true and false. The transcendentalists, in fact, spoke very disparagingly of the deductive, logical form of reasoning.

And well they might, I suggest. We all know how argumentation - rhetoric - is used to defend about any position one wants to defend. The power of reason to defend opposing views is limited only by the skill of the arguer. Philosophers, over the centuries, have used logic to prove that God exists and that God doesn't exist, that all change is constant and that change is an illusion. As with the Bible, virtually any position can be defended with logic, depending only on the skill of the arguer. (A perfect example of this comes from one of the greatest minds in Western philosophy. Immanuel Kant, in his book "Critique of Pure Reason," argued that using reason alone, that is by "pure reason," we can prove three things as true: we can prove that God exists, that human beings have free will, and that the human soul is immortal. Many of us, with lesser minds than Kant's, would find one or more of these assertions not obviously proven through rational thought.)

But that is not the biggest problem with reason. The real dilemma is that so many of life's important concerns are non-rational. It is true that one can use reason as a test for many traditional theological notions, but reason is of little or no help in wrestling with such significant life questions as love, honesty, integrity, happiness, and meaning. These are all, or at least seem to be, non-rational categories (that is, experiences that reason seems unable to explain).

To be rational does not mean to believe only those things which are proven to be logically true. Rather, to be rational means to be open for testing your convictions, and willing to be persuaded by reasoned arguments. To be irrational means to be unwilling to listen to other views. An irrational mind is a mind that is closed shut. A rational mind is one which holds convictions, but always holds them tentatively, based not on irrefutable truth, but on convincing evidence.

I believe that we UUs are in big trouble if our commitment to reason leads us to the conclusion that we can believe only those things that reason proves to be true. This would leave us believing virtually, if not completely, nothing. Contrary to Kant's 19th century thinking, reason proves nothing about God (either that there is or isn't) or afterlife (either that there is or isn't). Reason proves little if anything about right and wrong. Reason is silent when it comes to evaluations of social policy: abortion rights or tax cuts or a national health care system. It might tell us what is most efficient to accomplish certain goals, but it tells us nothing about what goals ought to be accomplished.

The "ought" of life - how we should live - is one of the central questions of both religion and philosophy, and reason alone is of little help with this question. In understanding this principle in our trinity of Unitarian principles, we face the question of whether we are limited to believe only those things that reason establishes as true.

Finally, let's look at the third principle, "tolerance." Actually, this principle is in many ways the flip side of freedom. If the question of freedom is whether UUs can believe anything they want and still be a UU, then this issue is whether we will tolerate, whether we will allow, any belief to be considered as within Unitarian Universalism.

Our tradition has always honored tolerance. As far back as 1568, King John Segismund of Transylvania, the only Unitarian King in history, issued the Act of Religious Tolerance and Freedom of Conscience - the world's first decree of religious liberty. Ever since, Unitarians have worked hard to establish governmental support for religious liberty.

The question that corresponds to the problem of the tolerance principle is the old question, "Do we tolerate intolerance?" It is easy to say "no," we don't tolerate intolerance, yet one must then ask who determines if a view is actually an intolerant one?

We can accept someone who believes differently, but are there boundaries to that acceptance if another's belief includes bigotry? Within our own UU congregations, these issues arise - not so much about whether to tolerate a bigot, but rather whether people who make other kinds of boundaries are being intolerant. I have heard people say that it is "un-unitarian" for people to believe in, say, the claims of parapsychology - that is psychic phenomena. A number of Unitarian Universalists who happen to hold politically conservative beliefs often feel the pinch of intolerance with our congregations by those who would not accept any form of conservatism within the boundaries of our tradition. Is it not intolerant to exclude those who live by the principles of freedom, reason, and tolerance, just because they don't happen to agree on certain specific political policies? In some ways, the real question is not, "do we tolerate intolerance?" but rather, "on what authority do we determine someone's view as 'intolerant'?"

Having examined the trinity of principles, having looked at their problems and limitations, one is left wondering - or at least I am left wondering - whether they are irredeemably suspect, unable to be reliably used as guiding principles.

I believe they are still valuable. though we must not overlook their problems. Like everything else, they are fallible. They are subject to human error and misuse. They are subject to manipulation. But they are among the best guides our fallible species has. I would like to suggest, however, that there are ways in which we can be more careful in understanding these principles.

First of all, we should remember that, like other trinities which may come to mind, they are a package, and each cannot be understood independent of the others. The "other trinity" I am referring to, you no doubt all guessed, is. . . . the Separation of Powers provision of the U.S. Constitution. That's right. The Executive, Judiciary, and Legislative functions of government. If you remember back to high school civics courses, you'll recall the artful system called "checks and balances." Each of the three branches of government - the President, Congress, and the Courts - are given certain powers to hold the other branches in check. No one branch is ultimately supreme.

This, I suggest, is one approach we should take with our trinity of principles - to view them with an eye toward limiting each other. No one principle is supreme.

From this perspective, we have an answer to the old question, "If Unitarian Universalists affirm freedom of belief, can we believe anything we want to and still be a UU? The answer is definitely "no!" Our freedom to believe is checked by the principle of reason, for example, and we are not free to believe what is contrary to reason, or irrational. We may not believe 2+2=5 or that the moon is made of green cheese. I have argued that it is irrational to hold beliefs with a closed mind, unwilling to invite critique and discussion. Someone who holds irrational beliefs or holds their beliefs irrationally, are outside the boundaries of Unitarian Universalism.

And our freedom to believe is checked by the principle of tolerance. In inherently bigoted belief is not acceptable within the boundaries of Unitarian Universalism. It is, therefore, not possible for a Nazi to be a UU. A Mafia hit man, a member of the Ku Klux Klan and any person schooled in hate is excluded from community of Unitarian Universalism.

The principles of freedom and tolerance, for example, hold each other in check. You are not free to be intolerant - that's where your freedom ends within Unitarian Universalism. The principle of reason also holds the principle of freedom in check. You must always be willing to hold your beliefs open to rational discussion, to the tests of reason.

Let me suggest another way in which we can understand the importance of these principles. It seems to me that Unitarian Universalism has a different approach to life than many other Western religions do. The goal of religion is not so much to discover ultimate truth. Religion, rather, is a conversation - a conversation with others, with tradition and history, and a conversation with nature, all in the expectation of better understanding ourselves and our place in the world. Freedom, reason, and tolerance are not ultimate truths, or ultimate answers. They are merely rules governing our on-going conversation with life. Through experience we know they are useful rules. They are, as Earl Morse Wilbur wrote about them, "not the final goals to be aimed at in religion, but rather the conditions under which the true ends may best be attained."