"Four Faiths in a Modern World: Introduction"
Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
Bruce A. Bode
September 26, 2004

(Note: To go immediately to the sermon, please click here.)

Poetry for Order of Service

The beginning of all spiritual life of any real value is courageous faith in truth and open confession of the same.

(Albert Schweitzer, The Decay and Restoration of Civilization, p. 102)

Call to Worship

This is indeed a beautiful day in the early autumn of the year that has been given unto us.
Let us then rejoice in it and be glad.
And let us count our many, many blessings.
Let us be grateful for the incredible gift of life, for the capacity to see, to feel, to hear, and to understand.
And let us then be especially grateful for the ties of love which bind us together, giving dignity, meaning, worth, and joy to all our days.

Congregational Covenant Statement

We are travelers. We meet for a moment in this sacred place to love, to share, to serve. Let us use compassion, curiosity, reverence, and respect while seeking our truths. In this way we will support a just and joyful community, and this moment shall endure.

Introduction to Responsive Reading

Our responsive reading this morning is written by The Reverend Dr. David O. Rankin, the senior minister with whom I served as an associate minister for over fifteen years at the Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It's a reading that may be familiar to some of you since it's been printed by the Unitarian Universalist Association as a little wallet-sized card that you can give to others who may be interested in the liberal approach to religion. To my mind this is about as fine a summary statement as you will find on the values, principles, and processes of the liberal approach in religion.

I remember speaking with David about the origin of this series of ten statements. He wrote it, he told me, as an attempt to summarize the commonly-held principles and values of religious liberals, having surveyed those who identified themselves as such.

It should be noted that although each statement here begins with the words "We believe," in no way is this meant to be a creedal statement - that would fly right in the face of some of the beliefs here stated. This is simply one expression among others of the approach to religion found among members of Unitarian Universalist congregations and religious liberals in general.

Responsive Reading

MINISTER: We believe in the freedom of religious expression. Every individual should be encouraged to develop their own personal theology, and to present openly their religious opinions without fear of censure or reprisal.

CONGREGATION: We believe in the toleration of religious ideas. All religions, in every age and culture, not only possess an intrinsic merit, but also a potential value for those who have learned the art of listening.

MINISTER: We believe in the authority of reason and conscience. The ultimate arbiter in religion is not a church, or a document, or an official; but the personal choice and decision of the individual.

CONGREGATION: We believe in the never-ending search for truth. If the mind and heart are truly free and open, the revelations which appear to the human spirit are infinitely numerous, eternally fruitful, and wondrously exciting.

MINISTER: We believe in the unity of experience. There is no fundamental conflict between faith and knowledge, religion and the world, the sacred and the secular, since they all have their source in the same reality.

CONGREGATION: We believe in the worth and dignity of each human being. All people on earth have an equal claim to life, liberty, and justice; and no idea, ideal, or philosophy is superior to a single human life.

MINISTER: We believe in the ethical application of religion. Good works are the natural product of a good faith, the evidence of an inner grace which finds completion in social and community involvement.

CONGREGATION: We believe in the motive force of love. The governing principle in human relationships is the principle of love, which always seeks the welfare of others and never seeks to hurt or destroy.

MINISTER: We believe in the necessity of the democratic process. Records are open to scrutiny, elections are open to members, and ideas are open to criticism, so that people might govern themselves.

CONGREGATION: We believe in the importance of a religious community. The validation of experience requires the confirmation of peers, who provide a critical platform along with a network of mutual support.

(David O. Rankin)

Introduction to Reading

This morning I'm beginning a five-week sermon series titled "Four Faiths in a Modern World." My series is based on an adult religious education curriculum titled, Four Faiths: A Unitarian Universalist exploration of the diversity, roots, and growth of religious belief systems. This is a curriculum created by The Reverend Fred Campbell, who later wrote a companion book to this religious education course titled, Religious Integrity for Everyone: Functional Theology for Secular Society.

Fred Campbell is a recently retired Unitarian Universalist minister now living in Williamston, Michigan, which is near Lansing, Michigan. Over the course of his 31 years in the ministry he served eleven different Unitarian Universalist congregations, eight of them as an interim minister. He noted that within the many Unitarian Universalist congregations he served there were different faiths or belief systems that he gradually came to identify as four in number and which he labeled: humanism, naturalism, mysticism, and theism.

His course invites individuals to judge which of these "faiths" might be closest to their own - not that you are all in one or another, but you may have a greater affinity towards one the others. Then, having estimated which might fit best for you, you are asked to respond with others who have always chosen that perspective to the major theological questions and issues with which religion has always dealt.

The reason I'm giving this sermon series near the beginning of my ministry with you is that I thought it might be interesting and helpful in the following three ways:

First, to provide a way of thinking about religion and religious belief systems that is something other than the typical, "Are you Christian? Are you not Christian? Are you religious? Are you not religious?" This will hopefully provide a new and different language or paradigm for understanding and relating to religion.

Secondly, this series is intended to assist you in thinking about and describing for yourselves in positive terms what your beliefs are with respect to the major theological and philosophical questions of life. You will be challenged to say, not what you don't believe, but what you do believe. What makes sense for you? What makes meaning for you? What do you really believe?

And, thirdly, this series will hopefully provide a basis for reflecting on and embracing the diversity of belief that exists within this congregation. It is intended to help you as individuals and as a congregation define and express not only what you believe but to understand more fully what others believe, even if somewhat different. It's to see how the beliefs of others make sense for them and provides them with a framework of meaning and coherence.

For my reading this morning, I will read the opening paragraphs of Rev. Campbell's introduction to his adult religious education course from the curriculum I mentioned titled, Four Faiths: A Unitarian Universalist exploration of the diversity, roots, and growth of religious belief systems. Rev. Campbell writes:

I have served 11 Unitarian Universalist congregations over 31 years. In the beginning I was aware of a diversity of religious faith but did not know how to respond to it. I struggled to know how to meet the needs of each person and family. After years of listening and reflecting, I began to hear four distinct faiths functioning within any given congregation.

Each faith had its own language, its own set of values, problems, limitations, and concerns. Each faith is based upon and emerges out of the personal experience endured by each individual. Each faith is what each individual does with the experience of solitariness. Each faith develops as the individual has the capacity to name, reflect upon, and do something with the experiences of his/her living. Each faith seeks meaning by reaching out into the realms of transcendence that surround the individual. Since all individuals are embedded in the human condition, they all need to respond to the central concerns of religion.

The four faiths I heard expressed are humanism, naturalism, mysticism, and theism. Each is distinguished by the way it uses language. I do not believe there is another option; that is to say, all options fit under one of these.

All of the people in the congregations I served were deeply involved in secular culture and lived in modern America. They had found that religious language, which usually means Christian, was not helpful to them in meeting their religious concerns. I have always felt that religion is vital to the health of all individuals, so I wondered why this was so. I went to the dictionary and found that all religious words are defined and given meaning within the context of Christianity. I believe Christianity is a wonderful and meaningful religion, but it did not meet the needs of the people I was serving. How could I open up theological reflection for them and offer them a means, not only to express their faith, but to celebrate it?

I gradually formulated the concept of functional religious language that sets out to define the words needed functionally to engage in theological reflection, so that Christian words and what they have come to mean became an example, not the only possible option. Functional definitions enable all faiths to enter the conversation without being compromised by the language being used. They allow individuals whose living has been dominated by secular culture to explore religious concerns with integrity.

"FOUR FAITHS IN A MODERN WORLD: INTRODUCTION"

Introduction

As I said in the introduction to my reading this morning, over these next five weeks I will be exploring four different faiths, or four different perspectives for making meaning, that The Reverend Fred Campbell, in his long ministry, has identified as being present within Unitarian Universalist congregations.

This raises the question: If there are these different faiths, these four different perspectives for making meaning, existing within Unitarian Universalism, what is Unitarian Universalism? Is it also a faith and, if so, how would you define and describe it? Or, would it be more accurate to think of Unitarian Universalism not so much a specific faith but as a kind of "umbrella faith" under whose shelter individuals seek their own more specific faiths?

Last Monday I, Flossie, and a friend visited the marvelous museum in Neah Bay, the museum of the Makah Nation that was created from the discoveries of an archeological dig that uncovered the ruins of a Makah village in Ozette some 500 years ago. One of the exhibits in this museum is the "long house," a large building in which several different families live, each in their own slightly partitioned-off area and each with their own separate family fire, but yet all together under the one roof so that contact and interchange between the different families is planned and inevitable.

Is Unitarian Universalism something like that: one large roof providing general support and shelter for a number of separate fires which represent differing faith perspectives?

This morning as my introduction to this series on four faiths I thought I would talk about the larger framework in which these four faiths exist and the relationship of this larger framework to Unitarian Universalism.

I'd like to get at that larger framework through the use the Socratic method of question and answer that will feature a conversation between an imagined inquirer and a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation.

Our inquirer seems to be a fairly thoughtful, curious, somewhat skeptical person, not exactly hostile to organized religion but not easily enamored either - organized religion simply hasn't been a part of this person's life, not now or ever.

I'm not entirely certain how this conversation got started but somehow it became known to the inquirer that the person with whom the inquirer was in conversation was a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation.

A conversation

INQUIRER: Really! So you are member of a Unitarian church!? You know, I've heard of that religion and it sounded, well, different and interesting.

MEMBER: Actually, the full name of the congregations in our association is "Unitarian Universalist."

INQUIRER: Unitarian Universalist? Couldn't you think of a shorter, less cumbersome name for yourselves?

MEMBER: You're right; it hasn't exactly been a marketing triumph. And even within our congregations many people simply say "Unitarian."

INQUIRER: Well, why don't you just go with that then?

MEMBER: What happened is that two separate denominations, the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America, consolidated in 1961. Neither wanted to give up its own name and history and neither wanted to force the other give up its name and history, so they just soldered the two together.

Actually, at the time, several other names were also proposed such as "The United Liberal Church of America," a name favored by a number of people with the hope that they might attract groups such as the liberal Quakers and Ethical Culture societies, but in the end "Unitarian Universalist" prevailed.

There's still some occasional discussion about changing the name. For example, some have slyly suggested that you could get a simple one-word name that would represent both denominations by taking the first two syllables of "Universalist" and the last three syllables of "Unitarian" and combining the two.

INQUIRER: That would give you, uh, "Uni-tarian." I see. Okay, so who or what are Unitarian Universalists and what do they believe?

MEMBER: Unitarian Universalists are religious liberals.

INQUIRER: Yes, and so who or what are religious liberals? Are you always so reluctant to talk about your religion?

MEMBER: Sorry, some of us suffer from a "post-traumatic evangelistic hangover syndrome." Okay, I'll tell you.

Religious liberals approach religion in an open-ended fashion so that there is no fixed set of prepared beliefs that is a requirement for membership. In our congregations it is expected that there will be differing ideas and beliefs, and the exchange and discussion of these ideas and beliefs is encouraged. I suppose you could say that religious liberals have an "inquirers' religion."

INQUIRER: Does this mean that you can just believe anything you want to believe?

MEMBER: That's the question we always get. And to persons accustomed to religions with definite creeds, Unitarian Universalism may seem to be a religion of "just believing whatever you want." But, actually, that misses the mark by a wide margin and is not really fair to the best of our liberal tradition.

Religious liberalism is not a matter of just believing whatever you want, rather it's a matter of having the opportunity and the freedom in the context of a supportive community to think through in a deep way what you do believe and to consider what is appropriate to believe given the best of modern thought.

Liberal religion is intended to provide an opportunity to examine and test your belief, to see in some cases what must be believed whether or not it is pleasant, and to see in other cases whether a belief needs to be believed or is worthy of being believed.

And if I can say one more thing here: the "liberty" in religious liberalism is not meant to be a license to believe to whatever you will, but rather the disciplined opportunity and challenge to own your belief and to see what beliefs deserve to be owned. What good is belief if doesn't belong to you, if it's just handed to you?!

INQUIRER: Okay, fair enough, but I still don't see what prevents really wacky ideas from being present in your religious organization. Suppose, for example, through some weird mental process, I came to the conclusion that I was a large featherless, flightless duck who went around laying eggs of purest gold? What would you say to me then?

MEMBER: I'd say, "Would you consider joining the Special Funds Committee of our congregation." I'd say, "You're welcome here as long as you don't make loud quacking sounds so as to disturb others."

INQUIRER: Oh, right.

MEMBER: Well, you brought it up. Look, there's probably not much that could be said to such a person, but to answer your question about what prevents so-called "wacky" ideas from dominating and damaging a community, I think, first, it should be noted that what is thought to be "wacky" at one time may prove to be a foundational truth in the future - such as the "wacky" idea that humans evolved from other life forms over a very long periods of time, or the "wacky" idea the solid continents upon we live are actually "tectonic plates" floating, as it were, on molten magma.

Religious liberals make an attempt to stay open to new and different ideas and beliefs. And, it's true sometimes in retrospect we may look foolish for running after the latest idea or fad, but that's a counterpart to religious conservatives who sometimes look foolish in retrospect for hanging on to ideas long after their due dates for usage have expired.

INQUIRER: But you're not answering my question . . .

MEMBER: I'm getting to that. So what keeps so-called "wacky" ideas from disturbing, dominating, and damaging a religiously liberal community? I would say: an open airing and discussion of the ideas and the discerning judgment of the community as a whole through a deliberative, disciplined, and democratic process. It's not so different than other democratic organizations - "Let us reason together."

INQUIRER: Okay, but I still don't get what holds you together as a faith or religion if you have no creed or common statement of faith. Do you have a common body of understanding and belief?

MEMBER: You've put your finger on a question that we often ask ourselves and with which we struggle, namely: what does hold us together? Do we have a central core of belief, whether spoken or unspoken? This is something with which I have personally wrestled, so let me give you my latest answer:

There is, first of all, and probably most importantly, a "covenant of practice" in our association of congregations that we affirm and attempt to follow - agreements as to how we will try to be together in community with each other:

Thus, we say, "Covenant before creed." We say, "Deed before creed." We say, "Right relations before right beliefs." We say, "Orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy." We say that loving concern ought not be tied to agreement in thought. This is our primary "doctrine," if you will.

INQUIRER: But what you are saying sounds very much like the principles and processes of a democratic society.

MEMBER: You're right! The Unitarian Universalist approach to religion has a strong affinity to our democratic republic and, as a matter of fact, historically, a good number of Unitarian and Universalists have played important roles in both the founding and unfolding development of the principles of our American democracy. We believe that these are good and worthy principles and processes and they are foundational for our American way of life, so why would we give them up for some authoritative system when it comes to religious organizations?!

INQUIRER: Well, okay, but is there anything else that holds you together or that distinguishes you from other religious organizations who also affirm respect for individual dignity, democratic process, and so forth?

MEMBER: Our congregations also affirm several sources that we look to for religious inspiration - not just the Christian heritage and tradition, which is indeed the historical taproot of our denominational tree, but many persons within our congregations find inspiration in other religions as well, Zen Buddhism or philosophical Taoism, for example, or in humanistic and scientific thought. And there has been an increasing interest in the ancient, earth-centered religions.

This acceptance and encouragement to look to a variety of sources for nurturing the life of the spirit is probably the most distinctive part of our public affirmation and affirms the "universalist" part of our name.

INQUIRER: So which are you? I mean, how can you be a religion when you are willing to embrace all kinds of religious traditions? Why can't you just pick one, stick with it, and invite those who are interested to do the same?

MEMBER: We've been very reluctant in our congregations to do that and it's perhaps what most characterizes us as an organization of religious liberals: we don't want to close things off. Plus, we tend to enjoy the mix of opinions and the continued exploration of truth. But I will admit to you, as I've said, that your question is one with which we struggle. And I've asked myself this question of our self-definition as a religion in the following way:

Are we Unitarian Universalists still within the broad realm of the Christian religion, part of the left-wing of Protestant Christianity, a part which happens to be open to learning from other traditions?

Or are we really now a new religion with our own name and our own set of beliefs, even though not perhaps clearly defined?

Or are we no religion at all according to the typical definition, but rather a religious organization that provides a process through which individuals might come to their own religious faiths and disciplines?

One thing you can say about us is that we tend to enjoy thinking about these questions, even such basic questions relating to our own identity.

INQUIRER: Do you ever come up with any answers?

MEMBER: Okay, here's my latest thinking on this: There is what I would describe as a "common ethos" among Unitarian Universalists. It is not set down as a creed or a membership requirement, and it goes beyond our public and printed affirmation of principles and sources of inspiration, but nevertheless it exists. Generally, Unitarian Universalists are persons who have accepted and embraced a "modern world-view." For example:

There are probably other ideas that belong to this modern world-view that I could enumerate given some time, but perhaps you get the idea?

INQUIRER: I get the idea, but all kinds of people in our society believe these things. As a matter of fact, everything that you have just enumerated I personally believe. But I'm not part of any religion, or do you think I'm a Unitarian Universalist?

MEMBER: As a kind of in-joke within our congregations we sometimes say that there are many more Unitarian Universalists outside our congregations than within them.

INQUIRER: So why would a person like myself want to be part of your religious organization? I mean, can't I live a perfectly good life without the complications of a religious organization? Besides that I'm a very busy person and Sunday is my only day to really relax and enjoy myself.

MEMBER: Certainly you can live a fine life without connecting to us or to any other religious organization, but, on the other hand, there are some valid reasons why individuals and families become part of our religious fellowships and, since you asked, let me list a few: