Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Briarcliff, Croton, and Ossining

Is Unitarian Universalism Religion Lite?

Given by James Covington on March 13th, 2005

Today’s sermon topic was selected by Greg Kullberg who was the high bidder in the auction of 2004! As you may know, the one who cumulatively bids the most at the auction each year, also wins the right to choose a sermon topic for the minister. I’m not sure why it’s taken so long for Greg to make up his mind. I certainly haven’t been pressuring him. I have to admit, I have some trepidation about being given a sermon topic by a parishioner, given the quirky, idiosyncratic and heady nature of this congregation. So I haven’t been calling Greg every other week and saying, “Well, have you made up your mind, yet?”

Years ago, just after I was called to be your minister, someone came up to me and asked if I would preach on “the spiritual nature of dandelion wine,” sometime. You never know with this group! Well, I jest, of course.

All I know is that Greg emailed me a few weeks ago and asked if I would preach on religious faith. I seriously doubt if I will fully speak to Greg’s interests, as this is such a broad subject, but he said he had recently read an op-ed essay, entitled “Hooked on Heaven Lite,” by David Brooks in the NY Times, where Brooks writes about the subject of faith. In his concluding remarks: Americans. . .are more likely to be divorced from any sense of creedal order, ignorant of the moral traditions that have come down to us through the ages and detached from the sense that we all owe obligations to a higher authority.

Now, of course, this suggests to the reader’s mind, that without a religious faith rooted in a greater power or authority outside ourselves, or a dogma or creed, to which we can surrender ourselves, we end up with a kind of narcissistic, feel good, easy going, semi-religious faith.

So, being that Unitarians Universalists are non-creedal, and non-dogmatic about the existence of God and the divinity of Jesus, are we just a manifestation of “religion-lite?”

Of course, this discourse immediately raised some profound questions for me, but questions about which, I frequently ponder. The first question is about the meaning of religion itself and ourselves as a religious community. Now I talked about this at some length a few weeks ago and I would suggest you read that sermon, “Why a Mission?” on our website.

There I referred to the religious impulse as a universal one in response to the dual reality of being alive and knowing that we shall also die. Life as we know it, inevitably sets up a dialectical, existential tension within which we naturally ask religious questions: Why do I exist? For what purpose? What happens after death? How do I get along with my neighbors? Given the violent tendencies in human interactions, how do we live in peace? How do we get along? How should we behave? How can we be good?

I think all religions attempt to answer these questions. The irony, of course, is that history is replete with religious tyranny. That being the case, I often ask, whether on balance the world is actually better off for the presence of religions, given the ability of their followers to be exclusivist, oppressive, narrow, and even murderous. Religion is one of the most destructive forces in human life.

But millions of lives have also been destroyed by political strife and by technology and science. But it is pointless to condemn politics or science because they are so widely misused; instead, it is necessary to ensure that they are used for good. It is also pointless to condemn religion because religion is not the cause of hatred and violence. It can be used to inspire hatred, but it can also be used to inspire heroic love and commitment. The world would be much poorer without Martin Luther King Jr., Ghandi, and Mother Teresa; without Mozart, Bach, Rubens, St. Francis, and Jesus of Nazareth.

The character of religion depends on what its adherents believe to be good, and on what they think the spiritual order is. If I come to think that the good is what enables all sentient beings to flourish, and the spiritual reality is supremely beautiful, wise, and compassionate, my religion can be a tremendous force for human good. If I believe my religion is good only for those who believe and all others are to be considered lost sinners or satanic infidels, then I would not consider that to be a force for human good.

And so this brings us to belief and faith. What is most important about my religious faith? Is it the dogma, creedal formulations and rituals that are most important?

Interestingly, the three great Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all base their faiths on divine revelation. Once written down, a revelation becomes sacred scripture and its meaning is kept alive by people who accept its doctrines and adopt its practices. But then, believers both between the religions and within the religions often disagree about which version of the text is the authentic revelation, or which doctrine best interprets the test, or which symbol or ritual remains most faithful to it. All Christians believe in baptism, for example, but some baptize infants, while others baptize only adults. Some fully immerse the individuals being baptized, others pour water on the heads, still others simply sprinkle the water. For most Christians, these differences are important. Their eternal salvation may depend on which form baptism takes.

Or it may not. What if the essence of religion is not found in a sacred text, or in a creed, or in a set of commandments? What if faithfulness is not a matter of adhering to the teachings of a great prophet or imitating the life of an exemplary servant of humanity or practicing rituals? This would not mean that symbols, stories, prophets, and rituals are unimportant elements of religious life. All can foster personal meaning and depth in people’s lives. It would simply mean that they are not the heart of the matter.

Exactly one century ago, William James published a series of lectures titled The Varieties of Religious Experience, which I believe rightly came in second on the Modern Library’s list of the most important nonfiction books of the Twentieth Century. In his lectures, James introduced a radical new approach to the study of religion. He proceeded not by examining scriptures, dogmas, and other external forms of religion, but by studying the actual experience of religious individuals.

James had two goals, as he explained in a letter to a friend. The first was to establish that the real backbone of the world’s religious life was the experience of the individual believer and not philosophy or doctrine. The second was, as he put it, “to make the hearer or reader believe, as I myself invincibly do believe, that, although all the special manifestations of religion may seem absurd (I mean its creeds and theories), the life of religion as a whole is humanity’s most important function.”

Before James, most people failed to make this crucial distinction. Either they accepted religion on its own terms, complete with scriptures, creeds and dogmas, or they judged the entire enterprise absurd and rejected it completely. James separated what he called the absurd part of religion (creeds and theories) from the central importance of religion in human experience. James was part of a group of late-19th century philosophers—Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Dewey among them—who became known as pragmatists. At the time, Darwinism was eroding faith in the Bible as a scientifically and historically accurate text; the pragmatists helped hasten that erosion. They championed the belief that certainty lies within individuals, and not in external things like creeds and scriptures. Instead of bowing to religious dogmatism and scientific orthodoxy, the pragmatists championed open-mindedness and tolerance. They evaluated ideas and values not by assessing who originated them and when, but by their usefulness—their ability to promote happiness, solve problems, and get things done.

William James expanded this principle to include religious beliefs. “What makes any belief true?” he asked. It is not that it appears in scripture. It is rather that holding the belief leads us into more useful relations with the world. James thought we should ask, “What is its cash-value in terms of practical experience?…What special difference would come into the world [if] it were true or false?” James argued that beliefs are true if they lead to good outcomes. If they do not, they are false.

For most religious people, this is a radically different concept of what it means to hold a true belief, or to reject a false belief. In James’ view, true belief is not a matter of embracing an authoritative text or adopting an authorized set of doctrines. Rather, it is a way of thinking about life that enables us to make a difference—a positive difference—in the world. If your beliefs cause you to live in ways that do not make the world a better place, they are false.

Put another way, the goal of faith is to develop character—to transform our inner life by the force of our beliefs. Alfred North Whitehead defines religion as a system of general truths that have “the effect of transforming character when they are sincerely held and vividly apprehended.” He concludes, “In the long run, your character and your conduct of life depend upon your intimate convictions.”

Religion is not merely a collection of texts, or a statement of dogma, or a code of behavior. The essence of religion concerns who we are within ourselves.

As your minister, my goal is that each of us will be seized by a conviction that transforms our character and animates our conduct. How this truth comes will vary from person to person. Some of us may be galvanized by the faithfulness of Abraham, or the teachings of Mohammed, or the example of Jesus or the wisdom of Buddha, or a personal relationship with God. Others of us may be brought to life by the music of Palestrina or the poetry of Wislawa Szymborska or the philosophy of Martha Nussbaum. Still others find themselves transformed by the act of teaching a child or advocating for prison reform.

There are many ways people can be moved to have moral convictions. What is important is that we respect each other’s experience and preference, as long as they work for the common good. A. Powell Davies once said, When I read Amos and Jeremiah, I say ‘Would to God I were a Jew.’ When I read the Parable of the Good Samaritan, I say ‘Would I were a Galilean.’ When I read the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians, I wish with all my heart that I might be a Christian after the manner of the Apostle Paul. When I think of Buddha and his ‘Eightfold Path’, I say ‘I, too, would be a Buddhist.’ And when I remember the trial of Socrates, I say in awe but with exalted spirit, ‘Oh that I might be so brave a humanist.’ And thus at the end, there is nothing I can say but that, like Emerson and Channing, ‘I want to live with the privilege of the illimitable mind.’

My point is that religion is not the external form in which the truth appears to us, but rather the transformation it effects within us, in our character and conduct. It is not creeds that ultimately matter, it is our good deeds in the world. The deeds we seek to perform are rooted in the principles we proclaim and as articulated in the reading today. Would we call such a faith, “religion lite?”

Let me say it again: the point of faith is not simply to affirm that something is true. It is to make yourself a better person and your world a better place. The purpose of religious faith as I see it is to develop character; to transform our lives by the force of our beliefs.

Let me close by making one final observation. Many of us have come to UU because we found ourselves unable to believe what we would need to believe to be a good Christian, or Jew, or Muslim. For that reason, we came here, understanding ourselves in some profound sense as unbelievers. What I am saying is that this is not true. We are here precisely because we are willing to believe. We are just not willing to believe that all the answers are wrapped up in a single person or text or creed. Rather, we have faith that our experience is trustworthy and that our purposes resonate with what is real and enduring. We have faith in the order of nature, in the authority of reason, in the unity of experience, and in the power of morality. We have faith in the dignity of each human being and in the motive force of love. WE have faith in the goodness of creation and in the benevolence of the divine.

Our convictions will come to us—albeit in different ways, and they will yield different froms of transformation and different modes of conduct. But we are here because4 we believe that intimate convictions will come, even to us. Does that sound like “religion lite?”

Closing words:
AS we leave this sacred space, may we embody the principles that bring us together: to honor all persons, to keep sacred the earth, to be ever open to the revelation of the divine spirit in our lives and the lives of all great souls. And may that spirit give to us in these perilous times, the clarity of mind, strength of purpose, and courage of heart to live our faith in the world. Amen.

READING

Although Unitarian Universalists do not subscribe to a creed, occasionally someone attempts to articulate the beliefs that most of us hold in common. This reading is an excerpt from one such effort by David Rankin, who served as a minister in our movement for more than thirty years.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.