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“Six Sources – Looking for Help”
A
sermon by Rev. Brian J. Kiely
September 16, 2007 Unitarian Church of Edmonton
“All theology is autobiography.” Rev. Forrest Church began the Foreword of a book on the sources of our Unitarian Universalist faith with that statement. He wisely didn’t claim it as a radically new departure in the world of theology. Others have come to that conclusion in different times and different faiths. Indeed, everyone in every faith and philosophy shapes their understanding with autobiography. We are our stories. In fact, most religions begin with the stories of their founders, but in the end how we receive those stories depends on us. We may generally accept the premises and assumptions of a particular faith or worldview, but in some way we will adjust it to fit the events of our lives. I have often mentioned my late mother. She was as good a conservative Catholic as ever there was...but she also believed in leprechauns. She would spin in her grave at the thought that such a folk belief was part of her faith, but for practical purposes, it was. It was an accommodation she made in her Catholicism that allowed her to incorporate parts of her childhood in Ireland. And when her youngest son left the church to become a Unitarian minister, she not only refused to shun him, but participated in his ordination, and despite his divorced status, openly welcomed his new partner into the family. These are two more accommodations that demonstrate how the story of a life shapes theology.
Once or twice each year, I lead a two part New U class, an orientation for people wanting to know more about our church. The next series will be Nov. 18 & 25th. We always begin by sharing a bit of our personal histories: name, a little about our religious background and why we came to a Unitarian church in the first place. It’s a good ice-breaker, but the exercise serves a greater purpose. We learn as we go around the circle that others have stories like ours. We remain distinct individuals with distinct biographies, but we discover places where ideas meet, or questions parallel. We remain unique, but we discover that we are not alone.
One of the things New U folks tend to share, indeed nearly all Unitarian Universalists have in common, is an unwillingness to accept a ‘packaged religion’. We don’t much care for neat and tidy answers that have been pre-formed, pre-answered and pre-digested for us. Like bad fast food, they may fill us up, but they just aren’t satisfying. And they don’t allow room for our much beloved questions. There is an old, old joke in UU circles: Did you hear about the night the Ku Klux Clan visited a southern UU minister? They burned a question mark on her lawn... We love our questions.
This weekend we had a Board retreat. During lunch, an American born non-UU facilitator got off on what he described as a ‘rant’. She was upset about what she saw as an enforced uniformity in the religious right. She was further upset by the creation of a Christian right sub-culture of music, books and movies that reinforces that uniform point of view and al but forbids questions that fall outside of acceptable norms. If Unitarians share one belief, it is that the ability to question freely and without fear is the cornerstone of religious and political liberty. We love our questions.
Last Sunday I spoke about how we adopted seven principles that don’t tell us what to do, or how to behave, but that give us things to consider as we decide how we will act, react and interact in this complex world. But those Principles are only part of what Unitarianism offers us. The second part of the statement includes six Sources we share
What are sources? In the tradition of religion it is not enough to state simply what you believe. You also have to justify your position by naming the source of your authority. What informs your belief? What’s your justification? In Christianity it’s the Bible with its Ten Commandments, and in some branches, the teachings of the Church. In Buddhism it’s the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. In Islam it is the Koran and the Five Pillars of faith.
In the early 1980’s Unitarian Universalists across North America worked through a broad democratic process of trying to name both the Principles they wished to follow and the Sources that gave authority to those Principles. I like and admire the Principles and try to follow them, but I am most proud of the Statement of Sources we devised:
The living tradition which we share draws from many sources:
- direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
- words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
- wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
- Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbours as ourselves;
- Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit;
- spiritual teachings of Earth-centred traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.
Why am Iso proud of these words? Because unlike most religions there is a delightful and seldom seen honesty about giving pride of place on the list to your own personal story. As Forrest Church wrote, “All theology is autobiography.” Our Sources do not begin with the words of some long ago founder or prophet. They do not begin with the words of a centuries old book. They do not begin with a creed that must be accepted fully and without change or reservation. No, our religion begins with each one of us.
“Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life.”
Why is this first Source so important? Because of its simplicity, its clarity and its honesty.
Our religious and philosophical beliefs don’t come from a book, they come from our lives. The woman who bears a child; The man who knows he has been blessed with good health and good fortune; The lover who buries a lover long before their time; the person struck down by chronic and life threatening illness, physical or mental; The person scarred and rejected by discrimination; the survivor of war, or domestic violence, these are the true theologians. It is experience large and small that shapes what we believe and how passionately we believe. It is experience of living that urges us to decide on the Principles that will guide our lives. It is experience that helps us decide whether we will love or hate.
In a way that reliance on human experience sets a tone for the rest of the Sources. Next comes, “words and deeds of prophetic women and men”. Prophetic here is used in the historic sense. A prophet is not someone who sees the future, but rather someone who criticizes the present. A prophet looks at the stated values of a community and then looks at the people’s actions and then points out their inconsistencies. If there is any future-gazing involved it is simply a prediction of what might come to pass if the inconsistencies are not rectified.
This source suggests that every woman and man has the possibility of being a prophet: your mother, your teacher, a novelist who strikes a chord, the composer of a song that inspires or some anonymous figure, like that man who stood in front of the tanks at Tianamen Square all those years ago. They are all prophets who call us to our best selves, who call us to confront evil. And their prophethood grows from their personal experience, their autobiographies.
The third source is the wisdom of the world’s religions. There is much to learn from others who have looked at the questions of religion before we have. Consider the deep self-examination and the expectation to make things right included in Jewish new year preparations. Consider the deep calm of meditation described by Buddhism and other faiths. Long ago people struggling with the events of their lives found these ways to bring comfort, insight and to make things right. We can learn from their stories and their discoveries. They have lived in their times and contexts and have found beliefs and insights that were powerful for them and are often powerful for us as well. It’s a source that reminds me that people and cultures who often appear frighteningly different from me share some of the same core values about life, and love and the spirit, even though their expressions remain foreign.
The fourth source stems from the third. We give a special nod to Jewish and Christian teachings, because Christianity sprang from Judaism and Unitarianism and Universalism grew out of liberal Christianity. I rather like the inclusion of this sixth source because I know that it got in because of politicking on the floor of the General Assembly. Those who felt a special tie to the Christian message lobbied hard in the face of opposition from those who felt it was covered in the third source. The existence of this Source is part of the biography of our faith, a tribute to discussion, democracy at work, and the willingness of the majority to make accommodation to new...or in this case, old ideas. We’ll see an accommodation of the new in a moment.
The fifth source is, “Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.”
As we saw with 19th century minister William Ellery Channing last week, rationalism has always been important to us. We may go for degrees of mysticism, but we’re pretty sceptical about the magical and the miraculous. In the 1930’s this scepticism was rechanneled into the constructive philosophy of humanism, the notion that we cannot rely on anything but ourselves and our abilities to think and act. But far from being limiting, humanism has a great faith, if you will forgive me that word, in the ability of the human spirit to overcome enormous obstacles. It is the incorporation of this source that finally moves us away from liberal Christianity and makes Unitarian Universalism a free-standing religion.
Until the late 1990’s, the Sources ended there. Yet almost from the time they were approved in 1984, there was an undercurrent that something was still missing. An increasing number of UUs were discovering that they drew their spiritual insights from nature and the earth. A good number became involved in earth-based religions. The Covenant of UU Pagans (CUUPS) was organized and began work. At the same time the rest of us were becoming more aware of and impressed by some of the principles of native religions especially in a time of perceived environmental crisis. After several years of lobbying, CUUPS persuaded an overwhelming majority of the 1995 General Assembly delegates to adopt a sixth Source:
“Spiritual teachings of Earth-centred traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.”
Again, it was an accommodation of the direct religious experience of some of those among us. I was a delegate that year and was moved to support this amendment, even though it is not my personal spirituality. I voted for it because it felt like the right thing to do, and because it did fit with my experience in this Unitarian faith: We are accepting of difference. We prefer inclusiveness to uniformity. We choose to live with the sometimes messy and nutritious stew of ideas and passions instead of insisting on the neat, tidy and tasteless McNugget of conformity.
Like the Principles, the Sources are only as good as we make them. The fact that they can evolve shows that people take them seriously. We do ask ourselves not only what we believe, but why we believe it. And that is an important dimension in our faith. Each of us has a story to tell and a personal theology that emerges from that story. The more we take the time to reflect on that story and what it means, the more likely we are to find balance, harmony and peace in our lives. Considering the Sources can help us get there.
Link:
A Matter of Principle, a sermon about the Statement of Principles of Unitarian Universalism.
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