SERMON

Unitarian Universalism is hard to explain. One of the initiation rites of membership in a UU congregation is being confronted with the question, "What do Unitarian Universalists believe?" Usually there is some discomfort for the new UU who isn't sure how to answer the question since we have variety of beliefs in our midst. Usually the questioner gets impatient with some vague generalities about how we can believe what we want and insists, "Well you believe Jesus is the Son of God don't you? You do believe in God, right?" In that moment the UU often yearns for some 10 second sound bite to fire back that captures us in a few words. This morning I'm going to teach you one.

The problem of explaining what UUs believe is similar to a Zen koan to be struggled with again and again. The difficulty comes from the twists and turns of history and theological controversy which has brought us to this point. The Unitarian Universalism we inherit today is exploring unknown religious waters unwilling to return to the Christian orthodoxy which we left behind, envisioning but not yet landing on a solid base to found a new way to do religion centered on values rather than beliefs.

Although we claim a lineage which goes back to the time of the founding of Christianity, we began leaving the bank of Catholicism during the Reformation. The corruption of the institution of the Church and the rise of Humanism during the Renaissance prepared the way for the Protestant focus on the Bible as the core of Christianity rather than the Church. Jesus' message and salvation could be discovered from the word itself without the need for a Catholic priest or church as intermediary. The printing press put Bibles in the hands of the literati. Our Unitarian forebears read the Bible themselves, trusted their own interpretation or chose their own favorite Biblical scholar to follow and began our heretical tradition by questioning the Biblical foundation for the Trinity.

The Unitarian heresy beginning with individuals thinking for themselves rather than being told what to believe is the proud root of our religious tradition. It is the course we have followed over the last 400 years and brought us to this point. Each step along the way, we have chosen to include rather than exclude, respecting individual conscience, seeking the broader embrace rather than creeds and orthodoxy with each generation widening the reach beyond the last.

Beginning with a rejection of an elitist self-righteous Calvinism, embracing the idea of a loving and compassionate God, and seeing Jesus as a creation of God, not co-eternal with God, Unitarianism and to a lesser extent Universalism, have weathered a number of theological crises. Emerson and the Transcendentalists (of whom we will hear much more about in January) began a long series of challenges to the authority of scriptures. People like Emerson and Thoreau were beginning to see nature itself as a sacred text and as a valuable path to truth. Sacred texts from Eastern religious traditions were beginning to surface suggesting persuasive non-Christian paths to truth. The idea of the indwelling spirit of God giving new revelation to the hearts of the Transcendentalists further challenged the authority of the Bible. Natural science over theology, world religions over exclusive Christianity, and transcendentalist spirituality were some of the important issues being fought about during the Nineteenth Century in Unitarian Circles.

Around the beginning of the Twentieth Century began the Humanist Controversy. Accommodations had been made with the nature worshipers, the world religions students and the mystics with a belief in God to hold them together. The Humanists came along to shake that foundation supported by the many triumphs of science against the believability of miracles and the discovery of natural laws which do not bend to the will of the so-called Almighty. Science alone seemed to explain everything, eliminating a need for a human invention called God. This battle was a tough one with much wailing and gnashing of teeth on both sides. The Humanists eventually won, loosening the definition of our faith to include them.

What goes around, comes around. Now today the Humanists are struggling with the women gathering in worship circles to celebrate the Goddess, the little Pagans we raised in our RE programs who now focus on Earth Centered Spirituality, the Buddhist meditation types like myself and the New Thought/New Age devotees polishing their crystals, drinking carrot juice with Spirulina, lighting incense and candles, exploring past lives and preparing for the Age of Aquarius. The tent just seems to get larger and larger as the Unitarian and Universalist Christians haven't are still hanging on along with the secular Jews.

Given all this diversity of belief, What holds us together?

This was a primary concern during the merger of the Unitarian and Universalist Churches in the late 1950's. The Universalist Church had a stronger Christian orientation than the more Humanist Unitarians at the time. The way we have settled the problem is to focus our identity on shared values rather than shared beliefs.

The good way to understand the difference between values and beliefs is to begin with an example. Most of us, I hope all of us, value truth telling and those who can be counted on to tell the truth. There are many good practical reasons why telling the truth is valuable in developing trusting human relationships. Even with strangers we are likely to fare better by telling the truth rather than a lie especially if that stranger wears a badge. But I hope we are all realistic enough to see that a belief in truth telling can, in unusual circumstances, get us or those close to us into a lot of trouble. The classic example ethics students like to debate is the case of answering your front door and being accosted by a visibly angry man shaking with rage and holding a loaded gun demanding to see your friend quietly reading a book on the back porch. Do you tell the honest truth? Do you lie? Do you evade the question? Do you collapse to the floor like a jabbering idiot? While we can heartily embrace the value of truth telling, it is relative to the life affirming and supporting context rather than an absolute commandment.

The difference between values and beliefs is important even though the words have significant overlap in meaning. Whereas beliefs are thoughts in which trust, confidence or reliance is placed without question, a value has within it a comparison of merit. Beliefs are absolute whereas values are relative and depend on the situation. The roots of the word value come from the marketplace evaluation of worth. In the free marketplace, people determine what has worth rather than conforming to an absolute or revealed standard. Value yields to supply, demand and quality. Values arise in the context of relationships and are related to this world. Values do not assume a theological context or unquestioning faith or reliance. Values are reflections of human desire, meaning and appreciation rather than extraterrestrial edicts.

While values are human centered, they can certainly have a foundation in belief. The value of caring for others in one's community can find much support ranging from self-interest by cultivating the good will of others to the Biblical commandment to love thy neighbor. When we agree as a community to value caring for each other, we need not agree on the belief which supports that value. Part of the inspiration for this kind of approach comes from recognizing the large pool of shared values promoted by the different world religions. The Christian and Jew need not argue about the value of human life even though they will fight bitterly about their beliefs concerning redeeming the human condition. Rather than focus on our differences in belief, we can collect together a set of life affirming and promoting values upon which we can agree to uphold together.

So, we can't answer the question, "What do Unitarian Universalists believe?" but we can answer the question, "What do Unitarian Universalists value?" Such an answer I'd like to begin to outline for you now.

The primary value of our religious tradition is the individual. Just about all the rest of our values are connected in some way to the placing of high value on the individual person. Whether we see ourselves the intermediate product of an evolutionary process, a servant of God fullfilling a divine plan, an accident of fate, or seekers gradually awakening to an enlightened condition, we can all agree that each person matters a great deal and has enormous potential for growth and development. Each person, to the greatest degree possible, deserves the freedom and resources to have a satisfying healthy life. Each person has much to contribute to the wealth of the community.

For many Unitarian Universalists, though not all, an important root of the value of the individual is the belief that what many religions refer to as the divine or Holy Spirit, resides within us as the center of who we are. This divine or Holy Spirit is not something which we gain through baptism, grace or confirmation, it came as original equipment out of the womb. We can ignore it, violate it, and resist it but it cannot be lost or removed as it is central to our identity. Thus every person contains the seed of the divine, of what is most worthy, most valuable in existence.

Whether theist or atheist in our embrace of the individual person, one distinctive value of Unitarian Universalists is the importance of the mind. We highly value the reasoning process as a way to facilitate our own growth, to help us get along with each other and to provide the basis for a system of justice which equalizes the powerful and the weak guided by the recognition of individual or human rights. Good and evil are not ontological categories but rather human created understandings of what supports and upholds life opposed to what tears down and destroys life.

Because we see the individual as our primary value, we do not accept the absolute authority of any revealed scripture or truth. Our minds help us understand that no limited sealed revelation can apply universally to the human condition. Because of the limitations and fallibility of human beings, we do not accept that one person or group can justly and compassionately govern us, be we a committee or a nation. Instead we place high value on the democratic process of individuals sharing power collectively to provide governance and direction for groups of any size - imperfect as it might be. In this process we value the freedom of individual belief and the right of conscience to stand aside from the will of the group.

Even though we put the individual first, we recognize the destructive result of unbridled individualism. Unitarian Universalists value the development of world community extending the opportunity for a satisfying life to all people not just those who look like us or think like us. We realize the rights and freedoms of the individual must be balanced with the needs of the community. We value the community and our responsibility to be good citizens. Increasingly, we are also recognizing our responsibility as stewards of the environment, a community we dominate but cannot exist without. Not only do we value our environment as a support for our continued existence, we also recognize that it has it's own integrity which must be respected. The tool we choose to balance freedom of the individual with the needs of the community and the environment is our minds, our reason, our consciousness.

Our values, the individual, the mind, the democratic process, world community and the environment are lived values not beliefs kept sheltered on an altar. Our shared and lived values become clear reviewing the past thirty five years of the resolutions passed at our yearly General Assembly.

The way we express our primary value of individualism is in the justice resolutions. We have been champions of the cause of human rights around the world and civil rights here at home. We are on record with concerns about government harassment of individuals, censorship of the press and what children read in the schools. We have a deep concern for equality of opportunity especially for the poor, the homeless, the disabled and the outcast of society. We have supported the efforts of agricultural workers to organize, fair housing practices, women's rights, and lesbian, gay and bisexual rights.

Another way we express our concern for individuals is supporting their health, well-being and self-determination. We are on record supporting women's reproductive rights, poor children's nutritional needs, stopping pollution whether from factories poisoning the water to second hand smoke. We've taken a strong stand on universal health care, access to hospice, living wills and the right to die when life no longer is livable.

Our concern for the health and well being of our community extends to the whole world. We have passed a number of resolutions seeking the end to world hunger and supporting international human rights. We support the development of a sustainable world community through nuclear disarmament, promotion of world peace, and stabilizing the world population which drive so many of the world's problems.

Our vision of building such a New World Order is through the use of the democratic process which vests the people with the power separating the church from the state and through support of public education to guarantee the next generation the tools to govern wisely.

These values expressed in our resolutions form the foundation of our faith in part because revelation is not sealed. New understanding and wisdom does not materialize only in ministers, priests and elected officials. Maybe even the other way round! The channels for new truth to flow are formed by our willingness to be open to its presence in all of life without exception, from the birds, the trees, and the rocks, to the quarks in an atom, to the discoveries of the human mind deep in prayer, meditation, contemplation or reflection or hard at work on a laboratory stool. Values are not fixed and can bend with the breeze of change. Beliefs tend to be rigid and break easily when confronted with new truth.

So what does all this have to do with religion which Websters defines as the personal commitment to and serving of God with worshipful devotion? As I said earlier, we are a faith venturing into unknown waters. The definition of religion which suits us better is the last one: a cause, principle, system of tenets held with ardor, devotion, conscientiousness and faith. We Unitarian Universalists take our values very seriously, holding them with ardor, devotion, conscientiousness and faith. The beliefs that support these values, for each of us are personal.

So next time you are confronted with that tough question, "What do Unitarian Universalists believe?", you've now got a quick answer: "We are a value centered not a belief centered religious tradition." Tell them of our value of each individual human life. Tell them of our faith in the power of the mind. Tell them of our passion for justice and equality. Tell them of our commitment to democracy, every size of community and our love of Mother Earth.

These may seem to be worldly values but what is beyond this world, if anything, depends on how we embrace these values today ... right here ... right now.

Copyright (c) 1996 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.