Sermons 2003-04

Designing Your Own Religion

Rev. Douglas Taylor

9-28-03

A few years ago I was sitting in a Portland, Oregon coffee shop with an old friend catching up.  This was a friend who had grown up with me in the church, was my best friend, had been the best man at my wedding, and is the godfather of my two older kids.  We hadn’t seen each other in a while, and it was great that I was in town for some conference or another and we had this chance.  We talked about what has been going on for each of us over the past few years.  We talked about mutual friends and memories of younger days.  We had not really had a chance to talk like this since I began ministry.  He asked me how that was going and he said, “Yeah, I don’t know.  I’ve been thinking I might need to go back to church.”  He smiled, like he was suddenly embarrassed and this was confession time. “Why?” I asked, resisting the scripted part I was supposed to play where I encourage my friend strongly to return to church, he makes promises, we part company, and nothing changes.

So instead, I ask, “Why?  Why do you think you might need to go back to church?”  My friend hemmed and hawed a bit before saying something about how church would help him figure out how all the different stuff in his life fit together.  My friend grew up as a Unitarian Universalist, but he is still one of those vast number of souls out there who are hungering for something spiritual, but are uncertain how to get it or whether it is a hunger that can be served within organized religion, even within an organized religion as disorganized as ours tends to be.  But here we are and lots of people come searching.

There is a noticed increase nationwide in church attendance across denominations over the past ten years.  The Pew Research Council put out a survey on this recently and when compared with earlier data, we Americans show a marked increase in membership to religious institutions.  People like my old friend are longing for richer connections and yearning for deeper meaning.

Well, journalists and editors over at the local newspaper, Press & Sun Bulletin, picked up on this trend and ran a series of articles focusing on “how people approach religion, what they get from it, and how it affects their daily lives.”  Over the course of last year starting in September of 2002 there have been ten major articles touching on differing aspects of Southern Tier religious life.  We Unitarian Universalists were noted and quoted a few times.  There was an article on “Church Shopping around the Holiday times” and one on “Politics in the Pulpit,” both of which referred to our congregation and contained a quote or two from the Rev. David Leonard.  And then finally, in the last article of the series, we became the feature rather than just an additional perspective.  The headline was, as you can see in the order of service where I used this as the reading, “Designing Your Own Religion.”  The second page headline of the article goes a step further, it says, “Designing your own religion isn’t easy –“

It was a great article, I mean, from a public relations perspective, it doesn’t get better than having the new minister quoted in the paper on his first official day in the pulpit!  There was a big attractive picture of the church on the front of the Lifestyle section, the smiling face of one of our members featured prominently in that same picture as well as in the banner on the front page of the A section.  It was good publicity.  Now, that said, I will start to complain a little bit.  The point of an article such as this is to highlight something most people would find interesting, but have not likely ever heard of; something unusual.  I think we do seem pretty unusual to mainstream religious folks.  Most church-going people would find it remarkably unusual to read about a congregation where each person is not only allowed, but also expected, to have very different beliefs, which don’t conform to any of the regular creedal statements.  Most, non-church-going folks have some idea from television and movies what church is supposed to look like, and this ain’t it.

Now, we are different in some fairly significant ways from the mainstream religious culture.  A recent billboard and bumper sticker advertising campaign in the mid-west has characterized Unitarian Universalism as the “Uncommon Denomination.”  But I wonder sometimes if the ways in which we are different translates well or if we just end up looking like an oddity; a rare blip of weird on the radar screen of religions.

I imagine there were quite a few questions bouncing around in people’s heads after that article.  Questions like, “If you don’t have any sacred text or shared beliefs, do you each just make it up for yourself?”  Or, to word it as it has been phrased before, “Can you believe anything you want?”  Another question might be, “If you each believe your own thing, why do you bother being a group together?”  Another version of that might be, “If it isn’t beliefs or scripture, then what is at the center of your worship service?”  And I imagine many people wondered,  “Just what is a Mobius Strip?”

As best as I can explain it, it all rests on the freedom of conscience.  One religious leader once wrote that conscience is a gift from God and cannot be coerced.  When I talk of “Conscience” in this way, I am not talking about the “Jiminy Cricket” kind of Moral Conscience by which one is able to tell right from wrong morally.  Most people talk about conscience along those lines when they say some criminal has no conscience or when a child has a guilty conscience about having stolen a piece of candy.  That’s not quite what is meant by this phrase Freedom of Conscience.  I don’t mean freedom of Moral Conscience.

Religious Conscience is similar to that inner moral judgment, only broader.  It is an inner light, an inner knowledge of sorts, similar to intuition or reason.  It rarely has anything to do with guilt.  It has more to do with belief.  And so, with questions like “If you don’t have any sacred text or shared beliefs, do you each just make it up for yourself?”  And “Can you believe anything you want?”  We respond: no, we do not believe as we want, we believe as we must.  We believe as our conscience demands.  It is not that we totally ignore all the conclusions and answers ever arrived at and written down, it is simply that answers from the past are not the final arbiter of truth among us.

You tell me which makes more sense: believing only what an organization tells you is true, or believing what your conscience within you tells you is true.  If your deep personal beliefs are about the same as the statements of faith read out at the place where you worship, then all is well.  But if your conscience and the creeds of your congregation are in conflict then you’ve got an issue.  In too many religious groups if there is a conflict between traditional sacred beliefs and an individual’s conscience, the individual must either alter his or her conscience somehow or leave the group.  In too many religious groups if there is a conflict between beliefs and reality, all attempts are made to adjust reality to fit the beliefs.  Here, we fit our beliefs to reality.

This is what we mean by Freedom of Conscience.  Each person’s way of accessing that which is holy is as unique as a fingerprint.  There is not a “right way” to do it.  Instead, each person has her or his way to do it.  If your conscience leads you to believe in God in a way that is inconsistent with mainstream doctrines and traditional beliefs, you are welcome here.  If your conscience leads you to remain uncertain about God, you are welcome here.  If your conscience leads you to reject the concept of God in favor of other life-giving interpretations, you are welcome here.  If you are a seeker of a new faith, if you are coming home again, if you are a weary spirit in need of rest, you are welcome here.  As it was written in the opening words Debby and I read at the beginning of our time together, “Whoever you are, whatever you are, wherever you are on your journey, we bid you welcome.” (SLT, #422)  We pitch a large tent here, metaphorically.  (The tent outside this morning for the book sale is a pretty big tent, but our metaphorical tent is bigger.)  It is hard to be an extremist here because we contain such a breadth of theological diversity.

This leads into the next question I imagined might come from this article three weeks ago.  “If you each believe your own thing, why do you bother being a group together?”  Another version of that might be, “If it isn’t beliefs or scripture, then what is at the center of your worship service?”  Indeed this is a significant question.  Unlike the first question I imagined, which uncovered a basic misunderstanding about external vs. internal sources of truth, this question points to a very real struggle for us.

I’m reading a book now for an interfaith religious study group here in town.  The book is Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels.  The chapter I’m in now is about the Gospel of Thomas, which is sometimes known as the Gnostic Gospel.  Specifically, this chapter addresses the differences between the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of John, both of which were written around the same time.  I stumbled upon a few sentences that I thought were very helpful for this very question.  “Thomas’s gospel encourages the hearer not so much to believe in Jesus, as John requires, as to seek to know God through one’s own, divinely given capacity, since all are created in the image of God.” (p34)  This is where we’ve been already.  This is the spark of divine within each soul that the Quakers talk about.  This is the Kingdom of God within that theologians wrote about in the Middle Ages.  This is the new covenant written on the heart of which the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah spoke.  This is the freedom to hear God speak to you through your conscience.  This idea is far from new and it shouldn’t be all that radical, but it is.  Why?  Well, the next sentence in that book goes on with this:  “For Christians in later generations, the Gospel of John helped provide a foundation for a unified church, which Thomas, with its emphasis on each person’s search for God, did not.”(Ibid)  So, you can see a hint here as to why one version made it into the Bible and the other did not.

It is admittedly difficult to provide a foundation for a unified religious organization when we have this emphasis on each person’s individual search of the truth and meaning.  And yet, here we are!  Most religious groups, particularly most Christian groups, gather around particular beliefs.  Unitarian Universalists gather around a shared process of uncovering religious truth.  One way I have characterized us is to say we are covenanting seekers.  A covenant is a religious way of talking about the promises we make to one another, and usually to God as well, about how we will treat one another.  The seven principles from the Principles and Purposes statement are a covenant.  This is not a creed or a faith statement which all assent to.  It is a set of promises we strive toward.  We are covenanting seekers, spiritual pilgrims on the road together helping each other along the way with encouragement and occasional constructive criticism.

Our goal as a religious community is not to teach people the right answers or the correct interpretations.  Our goal is to provide opportunities for engagement with the issues of ultimate and intimate importance in our lives.  So we have a course every now and then, such as “Building Your Own Theology” where people can do the integrative work of drawing deep meaning out of the life experiences they have had.  The image of designing your own religion is not quite accurate because the religion is ours, not yours or mine alone.  Certainly we each have the freedom and responsibility to work out our own beliefs.  The “designing your own” part of that is right.

I have bandied about several metaphors this morning.  We talk about being religion designers and belief builders.  We talk about being seekers and pilgrims.  I even made references to fingerprints and big tents.  The image I like best is that of being on a journey.  I think my headline for us would read: Pilgrims on the Path of Faith.  We may not all be walking down the same path, but we are walking together, and that is what matters.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

No Easy Road

Reverend Douglas A. Taylor
September 14, 2003

Meditation “A Common Destiny” by A. Powell Davies

There are times when I stand aside and wonder at the strangeness of this world of ours. The years of all of us are short, our lives precarious. Our days and nights go hurrying on and there is scarcely time to do the little that we might. Yet we find time for bitterness, for petty treason and evasion. What can we do to stretch our hearts enough to lose their littleness? Here we are — all of us — all of us on this planet, bound together in a common destiny, living our lives between the briefness of the daylight and the dark. Kindred in this, each lighted by the same precarious, flickering flame of life, how does it happen that we are not kindred in all things else? How strange and foolish are these walls that separate and divide us! …. When I think of these things I wonder. I wonder at the patience of God. While the dream still lives in our hearts, God waits. While the vision shines in our eyes, God waits. How long shall we keep God waiting?

Sermon

It is not that hard to be a member of a Unitarian Universalist Church. At most of our churches, all one must do is sign the membership book. This is the case in our congregation. That’s all there is to it. Just call me up, or find me sometime and I act as witness to your signature going in the membership book.  Now, I have heard of some churches that set up a few guidelines to serve as extra steps before signing the book.  But they tend to be in the line of gaining knowledge about our way of faith, and an understanding of what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist; rather than laying out acceptable doctrine or outlining the creeds by which new members are tested.

What I am steering at here is that we have a proud heritage of non-creedal congregational policy. Meaning: there are no tests of membership; no dogma or belief statements to subscribe to before you’re allowed in. And each congregation chooses how that works, there is no over-arching governing body telling every congregation what standards to set up. It’s just the membership book. No, indeed it is not hard at all to be a member of a Unitarian Universalist church. Well, actually to be more accurate, it is not hard to become a member. There is, perhaps a little more involved in being a member. The truth is, ours is no easy way.

I remember a question which came out of one of the New Member orientation days offered at my internship church. Someone, upon hearing the ideals and practices of our religious tradition, our beautifully written principles and purposes, and the litany of famous people connected with our way of faith, asked “Why then, is this denomination so small and unknown?” Indeed, if we are as great as it appears and there are no creedal restrictions on membership, why are we not the biggest show in town? This is not really a new question.

Just over fifty years ago now, Clarence R. Skinner, Universalist minister, educator, and prophetic author, posited that ours was a religion for greatness. In a book by that title, he stated: “The crisis of our age which is one of the most acute in the whole history of [humanity] might well be described as a sudden demand for greatness for which the world is not prepared.” (pp 21-22) He cited global trade and modern interdependent cultures as the context out of which the need of a world community and unity of spirit rises to rid us of our narrow provincialisms. He called on us to rise to this cry, to expand our understanding and sympathy in this radical religion of ours. He called us into greatness.

These are some rather grand marching orders! The implications say that with all the world interconnected and modernized, religion, too, must step up to speed. As other, more exclusive, religious systems are found to be too narrow for today’s globally-conscious individual, our universal way of faith can carry the people forward. At least this seems to be the implication. But before we write Skinner off as another wild-eyed dreamer, it is important to note that his intentions for our religious movement are not otherwise unheard of. Around two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson said, from the other branch of our now merged heritage, “The pure and simple unity of the creator of the universe is now all but ascendant in the eastern states, it is dawning in the west and advancing toward the south; and I confidently expect that the present generation will see Unitarianism become the general religion of the United States.” And one of the driving motives for Michael Servitus nigh on four and a half centuries ago was the thought that if he could only show John Calvin the fundamental errors in the concept of the Trinity, then the doctrinal reforms of Servitus would sweep over all of Europe!

And even closer to home, I have often detected a sense from some Unitarian Universalists who have come to us from other faiths that ours is on a higher order than others,…that Unitarian Universalism manifests as a fuller, more informed faith. Indeed the implication here is that our religious movement is great. While I tremble a bit at some of the more arrogant nuances, I do not find Clarence Skinner’s appeal at all unfounded.

I actually agree that we have within us the seeds of greatness. We are a religion that seeks the truth, as it is made known to us. Rather than fixing on any tenet or position, we continually allow truth and meaning to bubble up as it will. Rather than passing on last generation’s formulas and solutions, we hollow out space for the questions to tumble around and new connections to rise. We focus on saving this world through justice-work for today and for all people; not in personal salvation in a “next world” for a special select few who assent to a particular belief. It seems to me as though we are doing everything right. We should have every environmentally-aware, socially-conscious, politically-correct, hip and progressive idealist in a fifty mile radius jumping up and down for a chance to get through those doors and sign our book.

But, why, then, isn’t that happening? Why are we still so relatively unknown? Where is this greatness?

You know, sometimes clues come from the oddest places. For example, there is something in a little book called “The Gospel According to Peanuts” which is illuminating. Linus is sitting there, eating his sandwich, and he becomes a little absorbed in his own hands. “Hands are fascinating things.” He says, “I like my hands, I think I have nice hands. My hands seem to have a lot of character.” Lucy looks up with a puzzled expression while Linus goes on. “These are hands which may someday accomplish great things…. These are hands which may someday do marvelous works…. They may build a mighty bridge, or heal the sick, or hit home runs, or write soul-stirring novels.” And then he turns to Lucy with a flourish saying, “These are the hands which may someday change the course of destiny.” Lucy looks at his hands, looks up at Linus, and says, “They’ve got jelly on them.”

The Rev. Dick Gilbert says in reflecting on this stuff, “We’ve all got jelly on our hands. Not one of us is clean.” He has a point. None of us have really achieved that balance between all that we could be and all that our existential limitations are. This applies to groups as well as individuals. So this is that clue I found. One reason why we are not great despite our potential is that we are failing to properly acknowledge our limitations. We seem to be pretending that there is no jelly on our hands. But I’ll tell you, there is something that is gumming things up.

There are many candidates in the line-up of possible excuses. And we could likely sit together long into the night enumerating and exploring the options,…but that may well be one of our problems.

One rather prominent feature of our way of faith is our Intellectualism. Normally I would list this as an asset. Indeed, modern liberal religion is the heir of the Enlightenment. We Unitarian Universalists in particular embrace the view that the rational mind must be engaged in the quest for the Holy. As William Ellery Channing said, God gave us rational intelligence, we are therefore held accountable to use it. Indeed it was in this very strength that Jefferson saw the seeds of our greatness.

But there are two other characteristics I would have added in a healthy dosage. While we are so rational, intellectual, and enlightened, there are some who forsake the “heart” in worship and still others who ignore the justice needs within the broader community. Now I won’t pretend that these things fall out in our congregations always with such clarity, but these extremes do occur often enough that debates abound. I have never heard a complaint that we don’t investigate something enough, or that we don’t think about and talk about something enough. What I often hear is that we either don’t feel enough or we don’t do enough. And I do believe I have detected a hint of these sentiments, of this debate, even here in our sparkling congregation.

Over the years before I arrived here, I had, in fact, heard some UUs complain about the excessive emphasis of some on social action when the people in our own congregations are experiencing spiritual vacuity. “What good is all this social betterment,” they say, “if our personal and spiritual lives are still empty?” And likewise, I have heard others claiming that all this recent flirtation with spirituality and “feel-good” flakiness is distracting us from the work of the world. “What good is all this navel gazing,” they say, “when our children are killing each other in our schools?”

How strange, indeed, these walls that separate and divide. In the meditation this morning, A. Powell Davies asked “How long shall we keep God waiting?” Indeed I have wondered that myself. A few years back I would have easily located myself in the “Spiritual” camp rather than the “Activist” camp. But as I went further and deeper into my quest for personal transformation and wholeness, I became less and less comfortable with the world around me. The attention I gave to my spiritual life only heightened my awareness of the needs for justice in our world. I now see that the division between those who seek spiritual wholeness and those who seek to meet the needs of justice in our community is quite a flimsy division and an unnecessary one.

About a year ago, my children and I read “The Trumpet of the Swan,” by E. B. White. In it is described how zoo birds are, or at least were at that time, pinioned. The people at the zoo would clip a small portion from the tip of one of the swan’s wings, a painless procedure they say. In this way, however, the bird would meet failure in the attempt to take off because the wings would be unbalanced. No matter how strong the unclipped wing, the bird would remain permanently grounded merely because one wing was longer than the other. Thereby making it impossible for the bird to leave the narrow confines of the zoo environment.

And so, too, if we attempt to clip one wing by focusing too strongly on either spirituality or on social justice, we will continue to find ourselves unable to compensate for the unbalance, and thereby find it impossible to leave the narrow confines of our environment. Our goal, as well as I have ever heard it articulated, is both personal and social transformation. While each alone is a noble and worthy goal, each alone without the other is ultimately unattainable. How can one seek inner wholeness and not see the pain and desolation of the times in which we live. And again, how can one seek to comfort and empower a bruised and battered world and not be deeply affected and personally transformed.

This relationship is poignantly defined by the response I received the first time I preached this sermon. This is a road sermon which I have delivered in several congregations. Indeed, this sermon is roughly the same sermon I delivered during my pre-candidating weekend for the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Binghamton. But the first time I delivered this sermon, a few years ago now, I was visiting a congregation of a colleague in Maryland.  I was unfamiliar with the congregation and the congregation was unfamiliar with me. Specifically, the pianist was unfamiliar with my tendency to preach a relatively short sermon, and she had left the room.  I was running typically about twelve minutes, while she was used to the regular minister’s standard eighteen to twenty minute sermons.  She had left the room thinking she had time to take care of a few things.  Immediately after I finished the sermon, expecting to launch into a rousing rendition of our closing hymn “We’ll Build a Land,” the regular minister, who was up there with me, leaned over and whispered to me, “Stall the congregation, Douglas.” I needed to stall them while he went to find the pianist. He suggested opening up the time for congregational response. So I did. And they responded well.

One question in particular has stayed with me. “In our times,” a young lady began, “when so many of us suffer from Social Justice Attention Deficit Disorder, where people are only willing to commit to short bursts of justice-making, and when there are so many worthy and deserving tasks for my attention, how am I to find what I need to do? I ask because in the face of so much need, I find I freeze up and do nothing. How do I know what to do?”

I did not give her the answer I suspect was most helpful to her, or at least to me. Sure, I stood up there at that pulpit and said stuff, but the articulation came from another member of the congregation that morning. “Pray.” Pray or meditate or think deeply to your center, what ever it is you do, do it. Meditate on yourself, on your passions. Find what you are passionate about, and there you will find an outlet for your ache for activism. Because our goal, our purpose as a faith community is transformation: personal and social transformation.

I am confident that we shall never forsake our intellectual proclivities. But until we bring into the balance the emotionally spiritual aspects and the social justice demands of religion in equal and reciprocal measure, our way of faith will always be stuck in the quagmire of insignificance despite brilliance. But if we can link together the spiritualists and the activists who are so strangely at odds, I believe we may yet be able to achieve the truly great potential that is our movement. Ours is no easy road. Not only do we insist on allowing for different answers, we don’t even agree on the questions. What we have to work with is a shared process of discovery. We are in search for the good and we are in search together.

Benediction

We have a calling in this world.  We are a people of the wide path, the open heart, and the searching mind.  We have a calling to be a beacon of light and truth to the world.  We extinguish the flame of our chalice, but not the flame within each of us that calls us out.