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Two Theologies – Part Two
Reverend Brian J. Kiely, Unitarian Church of
Edmonton, October 24, 2004
Our Hymnal contains a section entitled “In Time
to Come”. Nine hopeful and determined songs, like the ones
we have sung so far this morning, live in that section. And I do
mean ‘live’. They live with such a positive exuberance
that I half expect them to jump out of the book, run up to the microphone
and demand why we haven’t perfected the world yet. By and large
they are older favorites picked up from earlier hymnbooks to represent
our Unitarian and Universalist traditions. They are symbolic of a
widely held belief in the late 19th and earlier 20th centuries that
we would move onward and upward forever, and that we really could
bring the Kingdom of God to this world.
“Wonders still the world shall witness never known in days
of old, never dreamed by ancient sages, howsoever free and bold.” Well,
the earlier generation certainly wasn’t concerned that they
might be setting the bar too high for us!
I love these hymns, even the strident double-time march of the Beethoven
setting for Tennyson’s ‘Locksley Hall’ poem in “Not
in Vain the Distance Beacons”.
Well it doesn’t take a great deal of looking around to see
that we haven’t got there yet. The world, as wonderful as it
can be, is not quite perfected yet. But of greater concern to me
is that we Unitarians don’t seem to widely share that old optimism
anymore, that our faith can help perfect the world in which we live.
And perhaps that’s at least partly because we don’t
have a shared faith toward which we can point. 70 and 80 years ago
when these hymns were penned there was a greater degree of homogeneity
among us. We were culturally more alike and theologically more alike.
You would still find a good deal of diversity in people’s opinions,
but that diversity fit within a narrower range.
As well, Unitarianism and Universalism were still separate religions.
The members of each church were grounded in consistent theologies
that differed from each other in emphasis and origin.
As we saw last week, Unitarians placed a strong value on a rational
approach to religion. Everything, every belief and story had to make
reasonable sense. Jesus was seen not as a god, but as a great moral
guide sent by God. There was still room for wonderment and awe, and
even reverence especially in nature. After all, it was the early
Unitarians like Emerson who spawned the Transcendentalist movement.
It celebrated our direct and unmediated contact with the divine through
our experience of the natural world. But even this reverence was
tempered by the belief that one day we would completely understand
that natural world through our advances in science.
By contrast, Universalists focused less on the rational and more
on their faith in a loving and cherishing God. The Universalist church
was fueled by love first, love which was then tempered by the use
of reason. The views of the two religions were both socially and
theologically liberal, but their emphases were different. The Unitarians
focused on the mind, the Universalists on the heart.
In 1961 these two traditions merged. The Unitarians brought their
rationality. The Universalists brought their passion and commitment.
And while each of these gifts influenced the other to some degree,
diplomacy and compromise have prevented us from ever really working
out what a merged faith might be. We have shied away from making
even tentative statements about who we are and what we believe, for
fear of alienating someone who thinks differently.
Instead we have developed a Statement of Principles, a wonderful
and powerful document. But it is not a document that says who we
are. Instead it speaks of how we will go about being in right relation
with ourselves, with each other and with the world around us.
Our Statement of Principles is a masterwork of careful political
compromise. A few weeks ago I quoted UUA President Bill Sinkford
as he noted that there is not one single word of religious language
in the Principles portion of the document. By this he meant traditional
religious words like God, spirit, faith etc.
The implication is that we worked so hard to not offend anyone with
our use of language, that we forgot how to name who we are and what
we believe, as individuals and as members of a church community.
In psychological parlance we became ‘pleasers’, individuals
and communities so willing to put the needs of others first that
we risk losing sight of ourselves and our needs.
Last week we shared a reading by present day UU theologian Thandeka.
She commented, “No one is more aware of the fallout of this
problem than our children. They grow up and leave our church because
they find little within it that makes sense or sustains them… Our
visitors are also aware of this problem. Five out of seven people
who visit our churches do not return. We can do better than this.
We must do better than this. We – and our children – need
a church that enlivens and sustains us all. So, too, does our world.”
But how do we do it? Where do we find this renewal? Do we have the
courage to wrestle with our own identity? to name it and claim it
and be proud of it? I don’t know. I can suggest four of the
roadblocks, however.
1. There is a societal tendency towards religious consumerism.
2. We have a tendency to be ‘pleasers’.
3. Change is always unsettling.
4. Finding common ground will be challenging.
Let me take these in turn.
The first roadblock is consumerism. Increasingly churches are attracting
not new members, but new religious consumers. Please understand I
don’t mean to disparage anyone with these terms. I am merely
observing a trend and using these words as descriptors of the two
ends of a continuum.
In the word ‘member’, I mean the kind of person who
comes with the intention of committing to an institution. Such people
may take a long time to join, because they take joining seriously.
They come with an expectation of being around for a long time, even
when they disagree somewhat with what is going on in the church.
They may not like a particular minister or a particular policy, but
still they stay. They belong to the church and feel a real responsibility
for its well-being.
At the other end of the continuum are the ‘religious consumers’.
These are people, usually good people, who live in a world that is
one great supermarket. You browse. You buy only what you want. If
you find after awhile that you don’t care for that product
you move on to another. Among this group there are fewer expectations
of commitment, less of a collective need to join things. As an example,
when a congregation changes ministers, some of the people from this
group will drift away when the Sunday morning ‘show’ changes.
When there is a major conflict, few in that group will feel a responsibility
to put themselves on the line to fix it.
As I say, this is a continuum with many combinations and variations
in between.
The growth of this consumer mentality poses a problem for religion,
especially liberal religion. The shopping basket of a religious consumer
will typically hold a little of this and a little of that. Seemingly
disparate items may sit in the basket – a belief in angels
might lie alongside an interest in Buddhist-like meditation and a “What
Would Jesus Do?” bracelet. There is nothing wrong with any
of those or even in the combination, but with so many people having
so many baskets with so many different things, finding a single center
becomes increasingly difficult.
And should we move to name a center, some of those consumers will
become uncomfortable and will leave.
And that brings me to the second roadblock: we tend to be ‘pleasers’.
Unitarians want to be open to all new ideas and to be welcoming to
any beliefs that do not cause actual harm to another person. That’s
a noble goal, and one I think we get fairly close to achieving now
and then.
But when we are too open, we risk giving ourselves away. It happens
all too often in personal relationships. One member of a couple will
give and give to make the relationship work asking nothing in return,
and getting not very much. One day that person wakes up and realizes
that they have become empty and are deeply hurt that no one has cared
for their needs. Therapists will say we need healthy boundaries in
our lives. Perhaps we need healthy boundaries in our religion as
well.
In many UU congregations I have known there are a few individuals
who take the departure of a single member, often a religious consumer,
as a personal affront and as a terrible loss for the church. They
want the church leadership to bend over backwards to meet the needs
of that one departing person. They don’t realize that the person
may find that UUism does not suit them or that they have grown beyond
it. For the pleaser, the fault is almost always with the church that
has somehow ‘forced’ the departure.
Were the Unitarian church to start even just a serious conversation
about what our commonly held beliefs might be, someone would object
and probably leave. That would be unfortunate, but it would be that
person’s right. But those left behind would also have to deal
with the guilt-inspiring feelings of people who would think we are
driving people away. That would get in the way of moving along with
the program.
The third roadblock is the fear of change. Congregations are, in
some ways, rather delicate systems. Whenever there is change in the
wind, the system gets anxious. Those of you who have been here for
any of the Sundays this fall may have noticed that our attendance
seems smaller. It is. In my next newsletter column I speculate that
this is, in part, due to the transition to the new building taking
so much longer than anticipated. The prospect of change drains enthusiasm
in some people, or perhaps it drains enthusiasm in all people some
of the time. I know I have felt that drain at times this Fall. But
I also know that it’s a normal part of change and that we will
rebound once we move.
The prospect of change brings the potential for conflict. Few of
us enjoy the idea of conflict, especially in a church. A church is
meant to be a refuge from conflict, right?
A meaningful conversation or debate on what might be included in
a statement of things commonly believed by Unitarians represents
the kind of change that comes with a high potential for conflict.
So it must be considered as a roadblock.
Finally, the fourth roadblock is the difficulty in finding not compromise,
but common ground.
Were we to engage in such a conversation locally or on a national
scale, you can imagine just how many ideas there would be to explore.
Just surveying these various and diverse beliefs would be an enormous
task. Reducing them to a list of things believed by a large majority
(if such a statement can even be made) would be another significant
challenge.
But the really hard thing would be persuading those who hold minority
views that they are not being excluded. Historically this church
has always been a place where people with differing beliefs could
come in safety. Our ideal has always been that we could share our
personal beliefs and have them be respected. Our listeners might
not share those beliefs and might even critique them (in the proper
and constructive sense of that word). But our listeners would always
respect our right to hold our beliefs.
There is a potential that a shared statement of common values would
threaten that sense of safety. And there is a danger that some among
us would use such a statement inappropriately to try and force others
to agree with them. That would be a terribly sad moment. I, for one,
think we could benefit from such a statement, but I would never agree
to have it stand as some kind of creedal test that all must salute.
That would simply not fit with the legacy of Unitarianism and Universalism
that we inherit.
Well, those are four pretty significant roadblocks: the lack of
commitment some religious consumers feel, the compulsion of some
members to keep the religious consumers happy at all costs, the daunting
prospect of change and the risk of alienating those whose beliefs
are in the minority.
But are those roadblocks large enough to convince us to not try?
I don’t think they should be. You see I trust the 5,400 Unitarians
and Universalists in Canada to keep things on track. Anyone who has
ever attended a CUC meeting will know just how hard it is to force
something through that is essentially un-Unitarian. There are many
watchdogs of religious freedoms among us.
And that fact, I believe, makes it safe for us to have a conversation
that is provocative and hopefully enriching. It might even lead to
a useful document.
Our biggest weakness comes in the face of the accusation that we
are a church that stands for nothing, that we are a place where
you can believe anything you want. Neither assertion is true. But
it’s also true that we are reluctant to clearly state what
most of us do believe. That leaves precious little for a newcomer
to hang on to.
Like Thandeka I think we owe more to our children and the next generation
of members. We can do better. It’s simply a matter of taking
a chance, of taking a risk so that something greater may come our
way, so that we can take a small step toward realizing that better
world envisioned in our hymns.
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