Articulating Unitarian Universalism

Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Des Moines Iowa May 2, 2004

By Rev. Dr. Joshua Snyder

 

            It is truly a pleasure to be among you all this morning.  I want to express to you not only my joy in being here, but also commend you on your collective wisdom for calling Mark Stringer as your minister.  I first met Mark a few years ago when I was in my second year at Meadville/Lombard, and he was just coming in for his first year.  We immediately became friends.  As time went on I was about to graduate from Meadville and was considering an appointment to the Second Unitarian Church of Omaha as the extension minister.  I spoke with Mark about whether or not I should go.  He told me, “Definitely go to Omaha.  I used to work there as an actor and it’s a great town.  I met my wife there!”  So I considered Mark’s words along with some others, and obviously decided to move to Omaha. And for the last four years now, I have been very glad that I took your minister’s advice.  And believe it or not, I found my wife there too!  Who knew Omaha was such a city of love.

            This morning I want to get back to the foundations of our religion.  I thought that perhaps the best way for me to get to know all of you, and for all of you to learn something of me, would be to talk today about good, old fashion UU basics.  Specifically the problem of describing our faith to others.  Many Unitarian Universalists face such a big wall when it comes to talking about what they believe, or what is Unitarian Universalism when asked by another person.  So if you will pardon the simplicity of the theme, I want to address the same issue Jack Mendolsohn was trying to address in “Being Liberal in an Illiberal Age” when he wrote that fabulous chapter that was our reading entitled, “What do I say after I say, ‘I am a Unitarian Universalist?’”

            In my time as the minister of Second Unitarian in Omaha I have spent a good deal of my time meeting and getting to know the new people who visit the Church.  On the visitor’s book in the foyer there is a section that allows people to let us know how they came to find the Church.  More and more the Internet is the most popular means of finding not only Second Unitarian, but also Unitarian Universalism in general.  When I first became a Unitarian Universalist, the Internet was not yet as prevalent as it is now, but I have seen in the intervening years a large Unitarian Universalist presence in cyber-space.  So in preparing for this morning I imagined myself a newcomer to Unitarian Universalism and, using Google as my guide, I just typed in “Unitarian Universalism” to see what I would find. 

It was an enlightening experiment.  I did not see the website of the First Unitarian Church of Des Moines Iowa, though I only looked through the first three hundred of the over six thousand hits I got.  I am sure you were in there somewhere.  Topping the list were the usual suspects, www.uua.org, the website of the Unitarian Universalist Association, and the Unitarian Universalist section of the religiously oriented website Beliefnet, were readily available.  Most of the sites seemed to be from UU Churches throughout the country.  But the ones that I found most interesting were the websites critical of Unitarian Universalism.  Looking at the groups that dislike Unitarian Universalism says almost as much about our religion as the numerous churches and organizations that celebrate our liberal religious tradition.  So in the interest of fairness and full disclosure, I thought I would begin by sharing some of the sites that are not particularly fond of Unitarian Universalism.

There were a number of sites, usually from Southern Baptists it appears, that claim that Unitarian Universalism is a cult that promotes Secular Humanism, Paganism, and Satanism.  They claim that we are committed to inclusively of all religions, which to them is not a compliment, and therefore stand for nothing in particular.  I even found a site by a missionary society on how to witness to Unitarian Universalists and win their souls back to Christ.  I felt like a spy reading the secret plans of the other side.  After a number of paragraphs of laughable advice, the author of this article concluded that Unitarian Universalists are among the most difficult to convert, if not impossible.  However, they reminded their readers that in Christ all things are possible.  Yes indeed.

More disturbingly though was the website of an anti-gay hate group that devoted a good deal of space noting that the two ministers arrested in New York last month for illegally solemnizing a marriage, were both Unitarian Universalist.  Interestingly, between all of this criticism from the right was a sermon from a fellow called “Why I am NOT a Unitarian Universalist” claiming that our denomination has become too soft by talking about “spirituality” and not affirming, in his view, rational atheism.  Thus we are a cult of secular humanism that somehow got too religious for the truly secular.

What surprised me about some of these sites was how much power they attributed to us.  Unitarian Universalism is growing, unlike many other mainline Protestant groups, but we are small.  There are over 200,000 Unitarian Universalists in America, by far the largest in any country in the world, which accounts for approximately 0.1% of the population.  According to surveys done in the late 90s, 49% of us are Humanists, 19% are Pagan or Earth-Centered.  Buddhist-Unitarian Universalists such as myself are only 4% of our movement; our highest percentage yet.

Despite of, or perhaps because of, these critics, Unitarian Universalists feel the need to articulate for themselves and for others what exactly their faith is.  This spring I taught a new class called “Articulating Your UU Faith” that has attempted to help participants do this very thing.  It is a good class because it really forces one to think and talk and revise how to say just what exactly Unitarian Universalism is.  This is actually an old exercise whose answer has changed throughout the years.  During the course of the class we looked at some old sermons delivered from the early days of the Unitarian Church in West Omaha.  One of them was called, “The Psychic Foundations of Unitarianism” by Rev. Dean Starr.  One of these foundations that Starr mentions, and he is certainly not the only one to point to this, was freedom of individual conscience.  Certainly this is true.  It is the case that many Unitarian Universalists come to the faith from some other denomination or religious tradition.  For whatever reason they may have had a bad experience with this other religion, and their experience of Unitarian Universalism’s freedom of expression makes them feel like a prisoner released back into the world.  However, it seems to me that freedom as the core of our faith leaves too much unsaid.  It is good to be free; to roam wherever one wills to go in the spiritual landscape, but freedom is pointless unless it goes somewhere.  Merely roaming around with no commitments or beliefs at all is the lack of faith not its fullest expression.  The post-modern impulse to deconstruct everything into nihilism is a temptation that must be avoided.  Surely there is something positive at the center of this religious tradition that has endured in one form or another for the past five hundred years.

In “Articulating Your UU Faith” there is a Coffee Hour Chat worksheet.  It asks only two questions, and I will share with you my answer to the first one.  It is simply, “So what is Unitarian Universalism?”  My answer to this question in a few sentances is this.  (Don’t worry about getting it all, I will unpack the parts of this in a moment.)  Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religious tradition that values the spiritual journey of every person.  We have no creed that all of us have to believe, rather we seek to learn from the religious insights of others because the truth is always unfolding.  Our Church is united by our covenant to walk together as a community, and our shared religious values.  Those values include the innate potential for goodness in every person, the interconnectedness and equality of all, freedom and democracy in governance, and personal authenticity in religious living.

There is a lot there, so lets take it in pieces.  Ours is a liberal religious tradition, meaning that we value our past while we look to the future.  Our history is important to Unitarian Universalists, despite what some might think.  However, the events of the past, and our religious forefathers and mothers, are not revered for their own sake.  We do not turn to Channing as an example of how one should live by imitating every detail of his life.  We look to our tradition as a source of learning.  What can we learn from what happened back then?  How can we improve upon our faith, our world, or ourselves as a result of learning the lessons of history?  Thus Unitarian Universalist history is a constant questioning of the past in order to make sense of the present and to move boldly into the future.  That is why it is a liberal tradition.  A conservative tradition sees only the past as the gold standard for everything else that comes afterwards.  Our living tradition sees the past not as an impediment but as an inspiration.  As a result modern Unitarian Universalists are always printing the names of famous UUs on everything we can get our hands on from cups, to T-Shirts, to bumper stickers.  The courage of James Reeb, a Unitarian minister killed in the Civil Rights movement in Alabama, or Theodore Parker who kept a gun in the desk of his study because he hid fugitive slaves in his church and wanted to be ready to defend them, or Clara Barton the Universalist nurse who tended the dead and dying in the Civil War, and after seeing so much suffering established the American Red Cross.  Do we have freedom in our individual religious choices?  Yes.  But with it comes a responsibility to keep alive that liberal spirit that inspired our religious ancestors.  We are its stewards.

Perhaps the central purpose of Unitarian Universalism, or any religion for that matter, should be the spiritual transformation of each person.  Unitarian Universalism acknowledges, and is perhaps overly honest, about the fact that this is not the same for everyone.  Each of us are unique people, and therefore have unique needs and desires for our own spiritual journey.  Community is important, but no one can walk your spiritual path for you.  You must do the work yourself.  Unitarian Universalist churches are institutions, a collection of fellow wanderers committed to helping each other out as best they can. 

I remember coming for the first time to a Unitarian Universalist Church in Ann Arbor Michigan while I was a student at the University of Michigan.  I fully expected to hate it.  I thought that I would be given yet another sermon on Jesus and God and the Bible, and I just couldn’t deal with it at that point in my life.  I was a searcher.  I needed something new and different.  I cannot replicate for you the exact nature of that first sermon, but I do recall that the service was a celebration of spring.  The sanctuary in that old Church looked out onto the memorial garden, which was just beginning to bloom.  Somewhere between the words, the hymns, and the view outside I knew this was the right place for me.  It fit like a hand to a glove.  Now that didn’t mean that I signed up for a bunch of committees right off the bat.  Heck it was about three months before I even stayed for coffee hour!  But what I really liked was that joining the Unitarian Universalist Church meant that my spiritual searching was not over.  Indeed, in many ways it had just begun.  That summer I became active in the local Zen Temple, and still went to the UU Church.  Other than those first three months, I have always been a Buddhist as well as a Unitarian Universalist.  Both communities were very supportive, both were places where I could explore and find my own spiritual path.

That exploration is encouraged because unlike many other religions, Unitarian Universalism believes that the truth is always unfolding.  The canon of religious knowledge is never closed.  We never fully understand the ultimate mystery of the world.  Religions and theologies ask the great questions of why are we here?  What is our purpose?  Unitarian Universalism teaches that whatever helps you answer those big questions of life is your religion.  It might be the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, or Mozart or Picasso.  The Holy can and does seep into our lives in every form imaginable.  It is just a matter of how sensitive we are to its callings.  If you feel something, an experience of the sacred, then consider yourself fortunate, and try to learn as much as you can.  That which tends toward justice and goodness is likely your path with heart.  Follow it diligently, regardless where it takes you.  Maybe it’s this Church, and maybe it isn’t.  But as the great Unitarian prophet Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, do what you feel is true and right even if it contradicts what you did the day before.

But just as each one of us are on our own spiritual journey, so too are the rest of the people in this room.  Unitarian Universalism constantly balances the individual with the community.  Just as we learn from life, we must also be open to learning from each other. Ours is a faith that values the diversity of perspectives, as Mendelsohn wrote in today’s reading.  Each person here, along with the entire world, is interconnected to the other.  The views of our neighbors touches us in some sense.  Therefore, Unitarian Universalism is as much a relational faith, a community of interdependent souls, as it is committed to individual freedom.  I believe that commitment is what is really at the center of Unitarian Universalism.  Most churches have a creed, a commonly held belief statement.  We have a covenant at the center of our faith.  A covenant is a mutually agreed upon relationship.  In a marriage, another example of a covenant, the two people do not always agree all of the time, and yet their disagreement does not instantly end the relationship.  “We need not think alike to love alike,” the Unitarian thinker Francis David once said.  In order to walk together along our personal spiritual journeys we need to acknowledge and remind ourselves of our covenant; our relationship.  This is why you recite it every Sunday morning.  It is within the context of that covenant that everything else that happens in this Church takes place.  This too was part of our reading this morning.  Amidst the diversity of varied theological beliefs there is the unity of a covenant; a mutual relationship that defines community.

Another source of unity among Unitarian Universalists are our shared values.  These are less well defined, and subject to debate.  Rightly so in my opinion.  There is a difference between values and beliefs.  A Christian might believe that each person is a child of God and should be treated as such.  A Buddhist might believe that everyone has the Buddha-nature, and should be treated as if that person were the Buddha himself.  The Humanist might believe that there is nothing sacred beyond the human experience of the universe and therefore people should be held in the highest regard.  We might be able to say that all of these beliefs share a common value.  They all value the “inherent worth and dignity of every person.”  The seven Principles of Unitarian Universalism are an attempt, however feeble they may be, to articulate the shared values of Unitarian Universalism.  They are not a creed, and should never be used as such.  In other words, the Principles and Purposes are a temporary and imperfect stab at saying what we all value.  If someone has a problem with them, if someone wants to argue with them or even reject them, they can.  That person is still a Unitarian Universalist.  We value prophets like that because they just might upset the apple cart enough to come up with something better.  Unitarian Universalism will never grow and expand if it cannot question itself.  That is the inherent prophethood of every believer, and it too is one of our shared values.

This, my friends, is my attempt to articulate the liberal religious faith of Unitarian Universalism.  Would it be enough to repel an enthusiastic Southern Baptist missionary intent on winning my soul back to the light?  Probably not.  But hopefully it will clarify our notoriously difficult religion for you good people who have come to give it a fair hearing.  May you always be blessed in shinning forth the beacon of liberal religion here in central Iowa.  Amen Blessed Be.