A Religion Without Guilt?
Rev. Mark Stringer
First Unitarian Church of Des Moines
10/07/01
Meditation for 10/07/01
Creative Spirit, Spirit of
Life
Source of Human Good
We gather this morning
Fellow travelers in search
of a destination
For our hopes and dreams
An oasis of justice and
compassion
In the desert of our
living.
We gather this morning
Carrying with us all the
accumulated baggage of our lives
Suitcases of memories,
packed tightly
With our passions and
regrets.
Packages of assorted
weights
Bundles of various burdens
May we find here a place
to set them down for a while
So that we may rest and
regain our strength for the journey ahead.
We gather this morning
Stirred by the brilliant
colors
Of an ever-emerging autumn
Signaling another season
of our living
Another season of our
lives.
The words of Wendell
Berry…
“Now constantly there is
the sound,
quieter than rain,
of the leaves falling.
Under their loosening
bright
Gold, the sycamore limbs
Bleach whiter.
Now the only flowers
Are beeweed and aster,
spray
Of their white and
lavender
Over the brown leaves.
The calling of a crow
sounds
Loud—a landmark—now
That the life of summer
falls
Silent, and the nights
grow.”
In this season of falling
leaves and growing night,
May the burdens of our
living lighten a little
Leaving behind the space
we need
To grieve, to grow, and to
live.
Amen.
Responsive Reading
In a world with so much
hatred and violence,
We need a religion that proclaims the inherent worth and dignity of
every person.
In a world with so much
brutality and fear,
We need a religion that seeks
justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.
In a world with so many
persons abused and neglected,
We need a religion that calls us to
accept one another and encourage one another to spiritual growth.
In a world with so much
dogmatism and falsehood,
We need a religion that challenges us
to a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
In a world with so much
tyranny and oppression,
We need a religion that affirms the
right of conscience and the use of democratic process.
In a world with so much
inequality and strife,
We need a religion that strives
toward the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.
In a world with so much
environmental degradation,
We need a religion that advocates
respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
In a world with so much
uncertainty and despair,
We need a religion that teaches our
hearts to hope, and our hands to serve.
--Rev. Scott W. Alexander
Sermon
When I told my
brother-in-law that today was going to be “Bring a Friend Sunday” and that the
sermon I was going to deliver would be asking the question, “Is Unitarian
Universalism a religion without guilt?”, he offered some sage insight that
could have saved me a lot of time. He
recommended that I say, “Those who didn’t bring a friend today should feel
guilty. There. I guess we don’t have a religion without
guilt. Go in peace.” But since I had already worked up a
lengthier sermon, I feel compelled to continue.
The idea for this sermon
was inspired by something I read in a past edition of The Unitarian Universalist Pocket Guide, a book published by the
Unitarian Universalist Association in Boston as a resource for those new to our
liberal branch of religion. In the preface, past association president Bill
Schulz wrote, “…if you are looking for a community within which you and your
children can explore the common questions of humanity without fear or guilt, we
may well have something to offer.” When I first found that passage years ago, I
read it as a triumphant declaration of truth. How wonderful it all seemed. A religion without guilt!
I had recently
discovered UUism through my involvement at The Community Church of New York,
and found the services I experienced there to be a balm for my past interior
battles over issues of faith. In my
late adolescence I had struggled with some of the rituals of my family’s
Presbyterian church, believing that my participation was inauthentic at best.
Fortunately, I had a mother who welcomed my questions and encouraged my quest
for understanding. I told her I was
uncomfortable taking communion because I wasn’t sure I could accept everything
I thought it represented. She told me
that a person doesn’t have to believe everything at church…that taking
communion was only a symbol of a person’s attempts to believe. While her explanations were a comfort to me,
I still did not feel as though I could participate with a clear conscience. So one Sunday morning I concluded that it
was time to commit to my lack of faith.
I would no longer accept communion until I could earnestly engage in the
ritual. In this church of my youth,
everyone partakes of the communion elements at the same time. When the grape juice was passed out in those
tiny glasses, I felt strong and proud of the teenaged stand I was taking. I was doing the right thing. After all, I thought, faith should not be
taken lightly and I owed it to myself and to whatever god there might be to
make a firm commitment to my struggle.
As everyone’s head dropped back to accept the symbolic juice, mine
stayed stationary. The sight was a perfect physicalization of what I was
feeling inside. The congregation’s
nodding heads were like a collective swinging door into my soul. There was
probably no time in my life when I felt as alone as I did that morning. I began to quietly cry, mourning the life I
was leaving behind as I passed into a new phase of my religious journey, a
phase where my doubt reigned supreme, where answers were not prescribed by a
central authority, but where I would have to share in the work to discover what
was true…where I would have to work to determine the content of my ultimate
commitments. At that moment I took a
tiny first step down a heretical trail long ago blazed by many of our liberal
religious forbearers…such as the 16th century Spainiard Michael
Servetus who was burned at the stake for his doubt about the doctrine of the
trinity; 19th century Universalist minister Hosea Ballou, who in his
Treatise on Atonement denied the
Calvinistic doctrine of limited election to grace and declared that salvation
was everyone’s birthright, regardless of their earthly mistakes; Unitarian
Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, who encouraged religious liberals to
eschew supernatural miracles for the divine significance of the ordinary course
of nature and immediate experience; Universalist minister and suffragette
Olympia Brown, who in 1863 was one of the first women ordained to the ministry
by an American denomination…as well as those who contributed to the twentieth
century movements of humanism, feminist theology, and neo-Paganism, to name a
few. I had started down a trail long ago taken by many of you here this
morning…a trail that avoids the guilt-ridden notions of original sin and innate
human depravity…a trail that leads instead towards what I have found to be a
more optimistic view of the true potential of our shared lives, a view that
calls for individual responsibility and possibility…possibility for change, for
transformation, for justice, for ever-emerging revelation and growth.
When I discovered
Unitarian Universalism, I believed I had
found a religion without guilt, for in the services I attended, I found space
for my questions and doubts…I didn’t feel the need to check them at the
door. The lack of dogma assured me that
I wouldn’t be expected to believe things I didn’t believe, a really big piece
for me initially…that not having to believe part. And yet, while this freedom
of belief has been and will continue to be an important component of liberal
religion, I have come to realize during my time in UU churches that freedom of
belief is not the only foundation upon which our living liberal religious
tradition stands. Certainly each individual’s reason and conscience are essential elements of her religious
perspective, but, I contend, not at the exclusion of the contributions of other
perspectives. After all, the word “religious” is derived from a Latin word
meaning “to reconnect.” When we are being religious, therefore, we are opening
ourselves to the possibilities of reconnection. Not only the reconnection that can occur within ourselves as we
embrace our own powers of reason and of conscience, but the reconnection we can
make with those who share our world. If we rely solely on our individually
formed beliefs, we run the risk of falling prey to the comfortable tendency to
believe firmly and deeply in a God who always agrees with us…a kind of idolatry
which, at its worst, can lead to the evil we have seen displayed in the actions
of a determined band of fanatical terrorists.
I think our need for connection and reconnection—for exposure to
perspectives other than our own, is one of the primary reasons it is important
that we gather here every Sunday, a day devoted to building a bridge from our
own minds into the minds of others; a bridge out of our own views of the world
into the expanding universe of belief.
If there is nothing against which our ideas of the world can be tested,
then what value do our ideas hold in the first place? By collectively bowing to the mystery of our shared
existence, we can move closer to recognizing the significance of our individual
lives. By gathering together and
supporting this community, we are affirming not only our right to question, but
to believe…to believe that our lives matter.
We affirm our humanity by recognizing the need to consider the beliefs
of others. And as we show respect to
those with beliefs different from ours, we effectively show respect to ourselves.
Those unfamiliar with
Unitarian Universalism sometimes describe us a wishy-washy people who avoid
commitment. I’m sure you’ve heard at
least some of the jokes…those that describe UUs as religious people who knock at
your door…for no particular reason, or who burn question marks in your yard, or
whose churches are just way stations
between Methodism and the golf course.
Perhaps some of you have seen the episode of “The Simpsons” during which the
neighboring Flanders boys are showing Bart a video game called “Bible Blasters”
where the heroes are missionaries converting the unsaved with some kind of
Bible bombs. When one of the targets is
not hit directly with the guns of good news, the boys shout out “Aww, you just
maimed him and made him a Unitarian.” I
do find these jokes funny and it is healthy for us to laugh at ourselves. However, they speak volumes of our tendency
to describe ourselves by what we don’t believe, thereby leaving the impression
that we don’t believe in anything.
Every time we describe our church as a place where people can believe
whatever they want, we are not telling the whole story. In fact, we are not
telling the story at all. One of the shared principles of Unitarian
Universalism is the commitment to affirm and promote not only a free search for truth and meaning, but a
free and responsible search for truth
and meaning. Responsible. I contend that the only way we can
responsibly search for truth is through engagement with others who share this
planet with us…and the planet itself.
Here at the First Unitarian Church of Des Moines, and at other UU
churches across the country, I believe we are providing laboratories where
these kinds of exchanges can take place. By leaving room for doubt, and
disagreement, and respectful dissent, by following democratic process in our
church governance, by attempting to approach justice, equity and compassion in
human relations, and by not limiting ourselves to a particular creed or a
sealed ecclesiastical canon, I contend we are being far from wishy-washy…we are
keeping ourselves open to the learning that occurs when we affirm and promote
the exchange of ideas. We are keeping
ourselves open to the continuous revelation that will always point toward reconnection
and commitment to that which is beyond our isolated lives. A primary mission of our liberal religion,
therefore, is to insist that there be room in our world for these kinds of
exchanges to occur…to encourage that our free and responsible search for truth
and meaning continues to draw from many sources beyond ourselves. Sources that include…
“Direct experience of that
transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to
renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces with create and uphold
life;
Words 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;
Wisdom from the world’s
religions, which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
Jewish and Christian
teachings, which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as
ourselves;
Humanist teachings, which
counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science and warn
us against idolatries of the mind and spirit;
And spiritual teachings of
Earth-centered traditions, which celebrate the sacred circle of life and
instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.”
So is Unitarian
Universalism a religion without guilt?
I think if we define guilt as innate depravity, some kind of inherent
moral corruption present from the moment of our birth, UUs are free from guilt,
indeed…as is all humankind. However, if
we define guilt as “the fact of being responsible for an offense or wrongdoing”
there is no assurance that our lives can ever be free from guilt. For whenever we don’t live up to our
principles, whenever we cut off dialogue and refuse to open ourselves to the
inherent worth and dignity of others, whenever we assume that our individual
perspectives are all we need, I contend we should
feel some guilt, some “remorseful awareness of having done something wrong.”
And may that guilt motivate us toward actions more in line with our complex and
demanding liberal religious quest for truth, meaning, justice, and compassion. Our troubled, endangered world demands that
it be so.
Closing Words (Lauralyn Bellamy)
“If here, you have found
freedom,
take it with you into the
world.
If you have found comfort,
Go and share it with
others.
If you have dreamed
dreams,
Help one another,
That they may come true!
If you have known love,
Give some back
To a bruised and hurting
world.”