"THE
CHURCH OF THE FREE SPIRIT"
A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear
Sunday, September 12, 2004
All
Like many of you, no doubt, I find presidential election seasons exciting and
interesting. I read the articles, and watch the news analysis programs; I
applaud at times and scream at times, and give the commentators a piece of my
mind.
But in addition to being interesting and exciting, presidential elections are also very frustrating, and I expect many of you experience this too. They are frustrating for many reasons, but for me the most frustrating part is that they are increasingly contests over the candidates' image rather than over issues. Actually, the candidates are not necessarily the ones to take the blame for this. They are usually responding to what the people want. In our country, I fear, the people are too often more interested in a campaign of images than we are in a campaign of issues.
Every four years, as a presidential election comes along, I am sometimes reminded of Plato's searing criticism of democracy. Plato was not a great fan of democracy. Plato's critique of democracy is a little surprising at first. The foundation of democracy, he said, is "flattery." Flattery! He meant this: that in a democracy, candidates are elected based upon how good they make the voters feel about themselves. Politicians in a democracy must forever be telling the voters that we, the voters, are smart, compassionate, strong, and wise. They tell us how great this country is, and that it is great because its people are great. "You, the voters," they say, "are what makes this nation the greatest nation on the face of the earth." And so forth.
And the candidate who makes the most positive estimate of the United States and its people - whichever candidate is more persuasive in telling us how smart and good we are - that candidate is the winner. But again, don't blame the candidates. They are only responding to what "we the people" want to hear. That's flattery. And that's democracy, says Plato. Plato is more right on this than I wish he were, yet I also think that his critique is far too simplistic, and that the flaw he identifies is not necessarily a fatal one.
But I'm not here to talk about the election, as tempting as that is. Rather, I thought about this frustration as I was preparing for this sermon and our fall Homecoming Service. This is the first service of our church year, and we gather together to launch a new church year.
Traditionally, my approach to the opening Sunday is to develop a sermon that focuses our attention on our reasons for gathering together: that is, I try to remind us of our Unitarian heritage and principles and traditions. These are, I believe, very honorable principles. If I didn't think so, I wouldn't be standing here as a Unitarian minister.
When we gather again to begin a new church year, it only makes sense to devote that time to honor the tradition that brings us together, to remind us of that magnificent heritage, and to urge us to action which promotes it.
Ours is the Church of the Free Spirit. When people ask me about Unitarianism, the first word of explanation that springs to mind is the word "freedom," for our uniqueness rests in our commitment to honor each person's free quest for religious truth, rather than prescribing truth for them.
Ours is the Church of the Free Spirit. It places no boundaries on the mind, no prohibitions on our explorations. It calls us to honor the highest that is within us, but allows us to define that "highest."
Ours is the Church of the Free Spirit. In nearly 500 years of history, Unitarians have demanded that religion not be a restraining force, but rather that it be a source for unfettered inquiry - it should give us not restrictions, but permission to explore beyond our present beliefs.
One of the best statements of Unitarianism I know was written over 100 years ago by William Channing Gannett. At that time, the Unitarians in this country were disagreeing about the scope and vision of the denomination. Some thought we should consider ourselves as a liberal branch of Christianity. Others thought that we had gone beyond Christianity to embrace a universal religious sense of all human cultures.
William Channing Gannett had a way of cutting
across disagreements, and finding words that all could affirm. In 1887, he
wrote an essay entitled "Things Most Commonly Believed Today Among Us," and was able to find language to satisfy all
factions within Unitarianism. The following formula is from another essay by
Gannett as an attempt to summarize the Unitarian approach to religion. Here is
what he said about us:
Freedom is our method in religion.
Reason is our guide in religion.
Fellowship is our spirit in religion.
Character is our test in religion.
And Service is our aim in religion.
I have yet to find any statement that more precisely summarizes for me the Unitarian approach to religion.
Ours is the Church of the Free Spirit. And Gannett's summary is pretty much the sort of sermon I tend to give in the Fall, at the beginning of the church year.
The problem is that as I thought about this, I realized how much I was sounding like candidates sound at election time: Aren't we great. Isn't our past great? Surely our future shall be even greater. Flattery.
Well, maybe next fall I'll deliver such a sermon. But I couldn't do so this year, because it sounds too much like those parts I find distasteful in elections.
Over the last several presidential elections, candidates have learned an important - and I think, regrettable - lesson about democracy. They have learned that they cannot talk about "limits" to the American people and get elected, for Americans don't want to hear about limitations.
American voters want to hear that our country must be the strongest, the greatest, the most freedom-loving, the richest, the most powerful, and the land with more opportunity than any other country in the world. Any candidate who speaks of limits, who says that we may have to learn to be less than the most powerful - as, say, Britain has had to learn this - that candidate is doomed to fail.
The American people don't want to hear about limits or about sacrifices or about any vision that is less than the best. What we want is simple: we want to be flattered. We want to be told how great we are, and how great we are destined to be. A successful presidential candidate is one who delivers what the people want: flattery.
What the candidate cannot do - what the American voter will not allow them to do - is to acknowledge that our country has blemishes. For example, a candidate cannot say that this country has been and still is a racist society, and has a great deal of work yet to be done to correct that legacy. Or that this country has been and still is imperialistic and exploitative toward poorer countries, or that this country has been and still is uncaring about its poor. None of this is to deny that there is much - very much - worth honoring about our country, or to deny that we have great qualities as a nation of which we can take pride. But it does show that we do not want our politicians to acknowledge the blemishes we have, and encourage us to love this country anyway, "warts-and-all."
So, in addition to being excited about Presidential elections, I guess I also get a bit cynical, too. And it is that cynicism that prevents me - this year, at least - from welcoming you on our opening Sunday with a great deal of flattery about who we are as Unitarians.
So for the remainder of this morning, I want to speak strongly about limits. I want to talk about some dangers within Unitarianism, and its shortcomings, its blemishes, its inadequacies, and its flaws.
This is what I might call a "warts-and-all" approach to appreciating Unitarianism. It is to say that, "yes, I know there are some problems with the Unitarian approach to religion. And we need to pay attention to those problems. But in spite of those problems, it still offers the best approach I know."
I'll discuss those problems by turning again to Gannett's hundred year old
statement of Unitarian principles:
Freedom is our method in religion.
Reason is our guide in religion.
Fellowship is our spirit in religion.
Character is our test in religion.
And Service is our aim in religion.
Let's talk about "freedom" first. This identifies the very heart of what Unitarianism is about. By "freedom" we mean that each person is his or her own final authority in matters of belief, and that no church or other authority can tell you what you must believe.
Quite honestly, for most Unitarians the discovery of a church that offers such a sense of freedom is - if you'll excuse the expression - a "godsend," a breath of fresh air in the stultifying array of stern and strict authoritarian religions in this society.
Unitarians are free to believe in God or not believe in God. Unitarians are free to believe however they may about an afterlife. We are free to believe in the power of love, or the power of prayer, or the power of science or the power of the pyramids. We are, above all else, free.
And yet, this freedom is not always the panacea it seems to be at first glance. We are always struggling with it. Perhaps the greatest struggle we have with it is to understand, as Gannett said, that it is our "method," and not the purpose of our religion.
To be free is a means to an end, and not an end in itself. To be free means to be free to do something, or to be something, or to believe something, or to choose something. Our problem is that sometimes we bask in freedom, without allowing freedom to take us anywhere.
We Unitarians are excellent at helping people be free, to shake off the narrow chains of doctrine and creed. We are much less adept, I fear, at helping people to know what to do with their freedom.
In South Asia there are
There are times when Unitarians seem to resemble these cargo cults, and forget that freedom is important only as a means and not as an end in itself. Freedom is not the "cargo" of our religion, it is the ship we sail on. Too often our ship never reaches a port, for we are, well, just too excited by being on the ship.
Ours is the church of the free spirit, so much so that we can become intoxicated with freedom, and find it difficult to go beyond it, or allow it to take us somewhere else. It is my fear that we can get so wrapped up in freedom, that we sometimes forget about conviction.
Gannett also said, a hundred years ago, that "reason is our guide in religion."
Along with "freedom," it is "reason" that gives Unitarianism its uniqueness among religions. Because of our commitment to reason, we tend to be suspicious of many supernatural claims, for many of those claims appear to be irrational. And while our opinions and beliefs may differ, we all agree to submit our beliefs to rational discussions and tests. To refuse to submit beliefs to the give and take of rational discussion is probably the closest we get to "heresy" within Unitarianism.
The problem is that it is too easy to forget the proper place for reason. Just as we too often forget that "freedom" is a method and not an end, we also forget that reason is our "guide" and not our dictator.
When I travel as a tourist to some strange city, I am the kind of person who does not like to engage tour guides. I'm peculiar that way, I suppose. If I'm going through a museum, for example, I'll eavesdrop a bit on what a tour guide is saying, but more often than not, I'd rather go off on my own.
Why? I'm not sure. Maybe it's the sense of adventure. I have had many experiences I'd call "adventures" in my travels, but never do I recall having any "adventure" while being herded in a group led by a tour guide. If your seeking adventure, you have to stray a bit from the guide.
And this, I think, is part of the challenge when Unitarians are over-committed to reason as a guide. There's just too little adventure there.
A great deal of what is important about life is non-rational: art and music, love and passion, hope and longing. Reason is our guide in the sense that it keeps us from straying too far and getting lost, but it shouldn't be used as a slave-driver or tyrant, keeping us from exploring the edges of experience which give us adventures.
Let me give one concrete example from our Unitarian experience. Surveys show that Unitarians very rarely pray. That makes sense to me. It makes sense because the normal understanding of prayer - talking one-on-one with God, and pleading for favors - doesn't make sense. It is irrational.
And yet, a broader definition of prayer includes far more than that narrow one. Prayer is really just one form of a very broad realm of human spiritual discipline known as meditation. In this sense, prayer takes many forms - from structured exercises such as yoga to forms of focusing such as visualizations to contemplative focusing with music or art. These are all non-rational, they are all in a sense very adventurous, and they are all forms of prayer not beyond the boundaries of reason.
Our commitment to reason as a guide should not prevent us from exploring such non-rational adventures, but it should serve to correct us when we cross over from non-rational adventure to irrational superstition. That sense of non-rational adventure has become rare within some expressions of Unitarianism. And it has so, I fear, because we too often forget that reason is our guide rather than our task master.
Gannett also spoke of "fellowship" as "our spirit in religion." It is this spirit of fellowship that makes us Unitarians, rather than, say, just "free thinkers." After all, there are many people out there - many millions I would guess - who share with us our ideas about religion: ideas of freedom and reason and all those good things that distinguish us as a religious movements. But those millions are not really Unitarians, for they have not joined in fellowship with others who share these same values. Only something less than 200,000 of us have done so.
But this sense of "fellowship" also has its limitations, too. It
is found whenever Unitarians value their fellowship so much that they rebel at
sharing it with any of those millions who might want it if they knew about it.
There are times when we think of Unitarianism as an elite club, and hesitate to
open our doors wider or publicize who we are.
Gannett also said that "character is our test in religion." This, I think, is one of the deepest insights into what our religion is about. What does religion do for us? Where does religion lead? While other religions may speak of "salvation" or of "enlightenment" as the function of religion, for us the litmus test of religion is the integrity of a person's character.
I don't have time for definitions here, but it seems to me that character is indeed what good religion should create. And contrariwise, if a person's character has real integrity, then I have no quarrel with that person's religion - regardless of his or her beliefs.
In our rush to honor freedom and reason, Unitarians sometimes forget that it is character that is the test of a person's religion. And in this, I'm as guilty as any of us. Too often I judge someone else's religion by criticizing its rationality and its credibility rather than judging on the basis of the character of the believer. The rationality and credibility of the religious doctrines are not unimportant, but they are not the basis by which the religion should be tested.
Let me give an example.
Roman Catholicism sometimes strikes me as a fairly odd religion. For the life of me, I can't understand how anyone can believe in transubstantiation, or how any reasonable person would willingly allow another person, such as the Pope, to decide for them what to believe, or how anyone could, with sincerity, pray to Mary as the Mother of God. All of this seems very strange.
And yet I know that the real test of a religion is not the credibility of its belief. The real test of a religion is the good character of its believers. And I have certainly met many, many Roman Catholics, including a number of priests, with deep integrity of character. And through them, Catholicism passes the test of religion.
By applying the test of character, we find, I think, the basis for the Unitarian commitment to tolerance of other religions. And we will keep that commitment only to the extent that we can remind ourselves that it is character, not credibility of belief, which is the test of a religion.
And then finally, Gannett suggested that "service is our aim in religion." Service to others is a long-standing tradition within Unitarianism, and it is difficult to conceive of Unitarianism without that tradition of service.
The reason for this is that by tradition Unitarianism is, fundamentally, an ethical religion. Our religion is not a belief-based religion, such as is commonly found in most Christian churches. For this reason, Unitarianism is forever confusing to our traditional Christian brothers and sisters.
Unitarianism is not based on a belief system, but it is based on ethics, a sense of responsibility toward others that is usually manifested in the form of service to others.
Unitarians are sometimes as confused about this as others. Since we live in a Christian culture that is based on belief systems, Unitarians also find it difficult to think of religion other than as a set of beliefs. And so, even Unitarians seem to think of the aim of Unitarianism as each individual developing his or her own set of religious beliefs.
While that is part of being Unitarian, certainly, it is not the aim. As an ethical religion, our aim is not to teach people to believe correctly, but rather to help shape a better world around us. That involves care. And that involves service. Unitarians who think Unitarianism is simply a religion of peculiar beliefs have, I think, missed the essential purpose of this religion.
Ralph Helverson, one of my favorite writers on
things Unitarian, said this:
"We will be remembered as religious people by the meanings we fuse into
people's lives, that helped them find order in their
feelings, clarity in their religious thinking, holy times of remembrance, and
the dignity of human response to need. To the extent that we do that, we will
be an association of religious people."
So there you have my "warts-and-all" description and appreciation of Unitarianism. Ours is a Church of the Free Spirit, but our church - and our spirit - are not without serious blemishes and limitations and challenges.
But the blemishes are not fatal, for no religion is perfect, just as no country is perfect, and just as no person is perfect. For myself, the blemishes of Unitarianism are ones that I can live with, and ones that I can deal with, for the principles of this religion inspire me beyond the blemishes.
I recall a conversation I once had with another Unitarian minister who had first been an evangelical minister. I asked him his reasons for becoming a Unitarian. His answer went something like this: "You know, all religions and all denominations have problems that they wrestle with, issues that they need to work out. Unitarian Universalism has its own set of problems just like everyone else. I just happen to find our problems to be much more interesting than the problems other churches are working on."
I found that comment to be insightful. It is not that Unitarianism is a tradition without problems or issues or flaws. But as I watch other groups debating their own issues, I realize how much more interesting and challenging I find our flaws to be. As all the mainstream religions wrestle with questions about ordaining women to the ministry, or recognizing gays and lesbians as of equal worth, or determining who is or is not accepted by God, I realize that these issues were settled in our tradition long ago, and I am grateful for far more challenging problems today.
Freedom, reason, fellowship, character, service.
Each of these may be flawed, but together they form the structure of this religion
which has integrity.
So I have pointed out that we have blemishes and warts and, fortunately for me, I suppose, we are not having an election today. But I'd like to end on this note: This is a church, and a religion, of which we can have great pride. I'm proud to be a Unitarian Universalist, and I am proud to be the minister of All Souls.
We are a church of the Free Spirit and we do embrace those honorable values. Can we improve as human beings? Of course. Can we improve in our religious life? Of course.
Let us begin this church year knowing that we have room to improve, as we also celebrate this religion that embraces the free spirit and freedom, reason, fellowship, character, and service.