The Authority of Experience

October 13, 1963
Rochester

Sermon Series: The Free Church In The Changing World

II Theology and the Frontiers of Learning
6. The Authority of Experience

Not long ago, a Boston newspaper columnist, Austen Lake, reminded his readers of the "classic reply of Teddy Green, Boston's clownish gun-bandit, when somebody asked why he had chosen to rob banks for a career. Said he with fine economic logic, 'That's where the money is.'" In this sermon in series on the Free Church and the Changing World, I want to speak for the authority of experience, because that's where the religion is.

Religious authority is the source of sanction for one's faith. Most Christians accept a book, a church or a savior as the seat of religious authority. What rightful power can be claimed for liberals as the support for faith?

Persons associating with the free church do not find religious authority in the commandments of a holy book, not even the Bible. We rejoice in the literary treasure and moral resources of the scriptures of the Hebrews, Christians and all the world's religions, but we do not acknowledge these documents either as supernatural revelation or as the final seat of authority for religion.

The origins and developments of scriptures have been studied by scholars of accomplishment and integrity. The sixty-six books of Hebrew-Christian scripture developed through a social process of additions to and alterations of the kernels of myth, legend, parable and teaching in order to accommodate various notions of religious leaders who differed. You must know how the many books vary in value. If you will compare Job with Leviticus, or Mark with 2nd Chronicles, you will find ample evidence. The scriptures are not an unquestioned and unfailing authority for faith unless one begins with a primitive worship of a book and uses only those parts of scripture that support the pre-conceptions and ignore the contradictions.

This is a dilemma that confronts any student who seriously attempts to deposit all his religious authority in the Bible. Because of this difficulty, there are some who have returned to an authoritative church to find the certainty for faith. Not an infallible book, but an infallible church is the source of religious authority for more millions of Christians than support any other faith. No one can observe the renewed energy within the Roman Catholic Church and not be impressed by the power that is generated by such ecclesiastical authority.

The Latin Catholic Church claims to be the sole authority for revelation and the Body of Christ in history. But the claims made for the Church convince only those who accept the assumptions. The historical evidence just does not support the case either for the authority of Peter, or that the Church at Rome was founded by Peter and has maintained direct succession.

The authoritative Church may be a comfort to millions. But to those who want to guide themselves in religion, it seems obvious that assertions of unlimited authority for the Church have been pronounced by limited human beings like ourselves.

But there are millions of Christians who say, "not the book as sole authority, not the Roman Catholic Church as infallible revealer of God's will, but the person of Jesus – there is the seat of authority in religion!" On the surface of things, this seems an appealing way to place one's trust. It was said of Jesus that "he taught with authority and not as a scribe." Millions who yearn for authority and spiritual certainty respond affirmatively to the invitation recorded in Matthew 11, 28/30, "Come unto me, all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest from the world."

However comforting, emotionally, this acceptance of Jesus as Savior and authority may be, the searching mind is still unsatisfied. We cannot know with assurance that Jesus said everything attributed to him. All documents which contain his words and the events of his life have gone through processes of accommodation and embellishment. His words and his life were in a political, social and religious context of 2000 years ago. There is just no assurance of historical accuracy.

Leaving behind traditional sources of certainty, of authority, where does the religious liberal place his trust, find the truth that will be his strength in life? In the authority of experience, we find the truth that is known while keeping our minds and hearts open to the truth that will be known. There is no better expression than that contained in the old Universalist affirmation of faith which was carried over to the purposes of our Unitarian Universalist Association, "we affirm the authority of truth, known or to be known."

In one of his significant books, written more than a generation ago, Walter Lippman reminded liberals of the question that we must always encounter: 'Where is your fundamental certainty? What is the basis of your authority? Where is the faith that will strengthen the nerve of your people? Be a 'preface to morals'"?

Human experience provides us with the source of authority, the support for the feelings of our hearts and the illumination of the thoughts of our minds. Shakespeare perceived this truth of life in Julius Caesar, (Act II, sc, 2), Calpurnia, the apprehensive wife attempted to persuade Caesar from going to the Forum. Julius Caesar replies,
"the things that threatened me
Ne'er look'd but on my back.
When they shall see the face of Caesar, they are vanished."

The authority of experience is the confrontation of life and daring to put our beliefs to the test of life, vanishing threats by direct encounter. Experience is the "actual living through of an event" (dictionary). This actual living through of events tests our beliefs in the only real way that they can be tested – not only that they must work in life to be valid, but also that unless we have the courage to take our beliefs and meet experience face to face, we will never know whether our suppositions are soundly and truthfully based. The encounter of objective experience authenticates or disqualifies that which you have held in your mind and emotions and supposed to be true.

This is guidance by the combination of inner honesty and applied conscience. Belief and action become difficult to separate. There is an old legend in Genesis which may illustrate or suggest. Isaac stayed in the land to which his father Abraham had migrated, but encountered difficulty with the king of the Philistines. Isaac had to move on and the Philistines filled in the wells which father Abraham had dug. After a while, Isaac resettled and the old scripture relates, (Gen. 26 17 ff.), "Isaac dug anew the water wells which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham and which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham's death; and he gave them the names that his father had given them." It was not enough to know the names that father Abraham had given the wells; it was not enough either to know the locations. If Isaac wanted that water for his family and herds, he had to dig out the wells again in his time. That was the only way to get the life-giving water.

Although religious abstractions may be more complex than re-excavating wells, the way to feeling certitude about one's convictions is not different. Even though the brotherhood of man is professed as an article of belief, one will not be blessed with the assurance of inner authority until one has experienced brotherhood. The experience of brotherhood may be taking a stand about integrated housing, employment, education. It may be standing for peace, negotiation, disarmament. It may be attending a meeting when home comfort lures; it may be participating in a demonstration when so many will think you are eccentric or extreme.

There are many who have found that the authority of experience has welded both emotional drive and intellectual conviction into a strong and confident attitude; fear has been banished by direct encounter. The deepest and most enduring learning happens when insights are brought to the field of action and the field of action creates still more creative insights.

The better teachers of our children know that direct learning is better than remote study. If a teacher wants to teach young children traffic safety, the best way is to take them to the street corners and give them the experience of waiting while the red light shows; and crossing when it changes to the proper pedestrian sign. The child's learning of traffic rules on the street corner is by direct experience. Some of you know that like public schools, we too have the children practice fire drills in the church school. We would not set the building on fire so that the children will have the direct experience, but we can do the next best teaching, dramatize and act out the proper procedures if they should have to leave the building in quick but orderly fashion. There would be general agreement, I think, that the child learns to be competent in traffic and emergency situations by direct learning. When that is not possible, the next best way is by action drama which creates most of the circumstances to be acted out.

This is not less true of ideals in action as well as preparing for environmental emergencies. If the ideas one believes are to have authority in our inner selves, then testing these goals in direct experience is essential. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay on Henry D. Thoreau,, wrote that "[Thoreau] remarked that the flora of Massachusetts embraced almost all the important plants of America – most of the oaks, most of the willows, the best pines, the ash, the maple, the beech, the nuts. He returned (the book) Kane's ARCTIC VOYAGE to a friend of whom he had borrowed it, with the remark that 'most of the phenomena noted might be observed in Concord.'" Then Emerson goes on to observe ''that the best place for each is where he stands."

The authority we seek to give substance to our goals is not different. The church, if it is to survive in effective enough form to warrant the interest and devotion of people today, must be an institution whose members do things that count for something, not just a place where, ad infinitum, they repeat the ideas that have formed in their minds. Like children with traffic lights, we need first-hand experience; in common with Thoreau, the best place for this experience is where we are. Of this I am sure, the most shining and strong convictions, whether religious, economic or political are tempered in the furnace of first-hand experience. Then it is that the findings of a reasonable mind become faith because they have been verified by what has been discovered dependable in human experience.

Furthermore, the trial of ideas in direct experience provides not only ways to reach our goals, but also is the best basis for acquiring new insights and revising ideas when they prove inadequate to real situations, or shown to be unrealistic when exposed to the light of what actually happens in the streets of the city, the marts of trade and the halls of government. There is no limit to the quantity of ideas that can accumulate in our minds as we weave our fantasies and construct our dream castles. But the quality of living depends upon constant test of these dreams in direct experience. The authority of experience is precarious – everyone who confronts it knows not only how foolish were some of his fears, but also how fragile were his hopes at times. But only in such manner can quality be applied to the accumulation of religious conviction and theoretical learning.

Lastly I would remind you that all the fine human feelings are based on the authority of experience. The child becomes more and more precious to the parents as they experience first hand the love that is born of responsible care and guardianship. We need no convincing that there is something awry with mail-order romances.

A considerable amount of the justice that is dispensed in our courts is based on the actual experience of human beings in identical or similar situations. Because the human family has experienced conflicts and dispute, a treasure of insight has grown. Fair play, understanding of why people are in conflict and what should be done to repair best a damaged situation are ways of wisdom and order that the human family has learned through direct experience.

Let me conclude with an illustration, old, but still relevant. In the old scripture of Exodus are contained some of the oldest strands of the Hebrew law codes. The ninth verse of the 23rd Chapter reads, "You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt."

Three remarkable things about this old injunction: First, in the days of tribal culture, the stranger was not usually welcome, the tribal unit was close, and in many tribal cultures the person cast off from the tribe did not survive. Secondly, possibly as long as thirty-two hundred years ago, this small nomadic people were concerned with the impartial administration of justice – even the outsider must not feel the weight of oppression. Thirdly, this simple but comprehensive goal of justice was based on the authority of experience. These people had known oppression in Egypt, they had been grievously burdened with the slaves' labor, they had been forced to make bricks without straw. They knew through direct experience how the slave feels, how the oppressed groans against the chains and whips of forced labor. From that cruel experience their feeling for impartial justice was fortified and made the law of the tribes.

For those of us who try to apply reason and use the storehouse of knowledge in reaching our religious beliefs, there is no way we can forget reason and knowledge and accept on faith the unquestioned guidance of one holy book or one holy church or one holy man. These outside authorities can not dictate our beliefs because we will not yield spiritual independence. We count on ourselves and no matter how keen our reason or how extensive our knowledge, we will not acquire the inner certainty which will enable us to live with faith, hope and love unless we live out all we believe and rest our case in the authority of experience that will come to us through life. I believe in the authority of experience because that's where the religion is.

Feeling, Thought, Truth

October 6, 1963
Rochester

Sermon Series: The Free Church In The Changing World

II Theology and the Frontiers of Learning
5. Feeling, Thought, Truth

Religious beliefs create considerable anxiety when religious feelings are contradicted by rational thought. Religion is felt by the emotions and expressed by thoughts and words. John Wesley was converted at Aldersgate when. His heart felt "strangely warmed" as he read Luther's commentary on Paul. He felt religion; that made all the difference in his life. On the other hand, the reflective philosopher would argue that what makes all the difference is religious knowledge possessed by the mind and expressed in logical, factual ways.

In discussing feeling, thought and truth, I want to emphasize that none of these can be slighted if one is to possess a faith that fulfills the demands of a reasoning mind and satisfies the need of hungry emotion. The wholeness of religious truth depends on these priorities. But this full-bodied religious truth is many times not achieved when growth is stunted because of a wild monopoly of feeling or a sterile assumption that only mental processes matter.

This gap in communications between mind and emotion is not newly discovered; it has existed for a long time. In his new book, ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE, (Alfred A,. Knopf, 1963), Richard Hofstadter observes, (p.55), "Since some tension between the mind and the heart, between emotion and intellect, is everywhere a persistent feature of Christian experience, it would be a mistake to suggest that there is anything distinctively American in religious anti-intellectualism. Long before America was discovered, the Christian community was perennially divided between those who believed that intellect should be subordinated to emotion, or in effect abandoned at the dictates of emotion."

First, our feelings: they represent as much of our real self as bone, blood and tissue. We flush with anger, or pale with grief; our internal organs flash a message disturbance or excitement when we are threatened or exhilarated. Who would say that we could still be human if we no longer felt joy and sorrow, anticipation and regret, assurance and fear, hope and despair? But it is also true to human experience that our emotions are something like potential delinquents in society. Trouble comes when the course of events pushes them across the line from normal to disturbed.

Feelings have always been recognized as great forces in the reaching of goals. Cyrus Gordon, whose studies in the archeology of Bible lands have provided cause for considerable discussion, made an observation pertinent to the theme of emotion. (BEFORE THE BIBLE, Harper and Row, 1963, p. 299). Calling attention to the personality of King David, Dr. Gordon pointed out that this warrior-king was also a singer, poet and dancer. This was not a contradiction in character because parallels are found in other ancient Mediterranean cultures where music, poetry and dancing were part of the "complex for training the troops." The archaeologist goes on to point out such parallels as "the warlike character of the dance," the recitation of poems from memory while moving in time to the rhythm, and the reference in the ILLIAD to the dancing performed by warriors.

Religious use of emotional expressions - dance, song poetry - are at least as ancient as the expression of feeling as an aid to the art of war and the morale of troops. Religion was felt before the creeds were written.

There is an illustration close to home which seems enlightening to me. To the best of my recollection when Midtown Plaza was opened and the fountains filled the pool at the north end of the mall, there was no provision for turning over to charities the monies that were thrown into the pool. People tossed pennies, nickels and dimes into the pool? Why? Because they had heard of wishing well traditions or lucky fountains in Europe? Whatever the cause of the impulse, there is little reason to believe that this was a gesture of charity. After the coins accumulated, my recollection is that then the Midtown operators announced that the money retrieved would be given to good causes. Even today, the signs are quite inconspicuous that coins in the fountain will be given to charity. People throw away money because they feel like tossing coins into the fountain. If the signs said that the proceeds would go for some evil purpose, the pennies would still shine from the green-tile bottom. Perhaps there is much wishful thinking that pennies cast upon the waters will return (with interest) after many days. But certainly throwing coins in the fountain is emotional impulse, not reasoned decision.

Without religious feeling, religion, literally, is inhuman, because to be human is to be emotional. Yet this reality of human experience is an occasional source of amusement, vexation, frustration, even turmoil in a church where practices and procedures are not dictated by ecclesiastical authority. In the course of worship services I conduct, sometimes the brass cross is the symbol; sometimes it is not. It is placed today to be a visible reminder that religion is felt here, too. Many of you are indifferent to the presence or absence of traditional symbols. But I know too, that there are those among you who feel that the cross should never be absent; and that there are those among you who feel that the cross should never be present. While I shall deal with religious symbols more extensively in a few weeks, I would merely quote a German mystic (quoted by Dean Inge) who said, "The cross of Golgotha cannot rescue thee from the evil one unless it be set up in thine own heart." On the other hand I would observe that the cross is not a particularistic symbol alone that signifies Christian rigidity, intolerance and partialism, but a symbol universal in both space and time in human culture. But this dual observation may not comfort feelings.

The late Professor J. B. Pratt in his book of lasting interest and insight, ETERNAL VALUES IN RELIGION, relates, (p. l48) how he once asked a very ignorant Chinese monk the meaning of a prayer, "Namu Omito Fo which he religiously repeated many hundred times every day. He answered very simply, 'I do not know its meaning. I only know it helps your heart to say it over and over when you are in trouble.'"

But whether everyone likes it or not, thought is a characteristic of religion,too. We place great value on rational thought—that is, we believe religion can make sense to the mind and be subject to the conditions of reasonable thought. Last week, I quoted from Albert Camus' "Myth of Sisyphus," and afterwards was criticized, and rightfully so, for insufficiently explaining why I used it. The quotation was, "we are prey to our own truths, once we have admitted them, we are slave to them."

To claim that our religion is a thoughtful, reasonable one is to compel us to think and talk about religion on the grounds of thought and reason. We want to know meanings. Only in our irrational moments can we say with the Chinese monk, "I do not know its meaning. I only know it helps your heart to say it over and over when you are in trouble." Because we are committed to reasonable thought, we have been freed, for the most part, from irrationality of feeling without thought.

I have been helped to understand this about myself and ourselves by a rather remarkable anecdote. For some time, entirely without my subscription or real interest, I have been on the mailing list for an extremely fundamentalist religious magazine. In something of a vague, courteous gesture to the unknown person who believes I need this, I do leaf through it before tossing it in the round file whose contents soon reach the city incinerator. The following item, I did clip, however: The item carries this caption, "God helps listener to sell his real estate." The item relates how a family who moved to a new location were carrying a difficult financial burden because they had been unable to sell their property in the city where they had lived previously. In a letter to the magazine, the man wrote how he and his wife had been praying about this real estate dilemma—and the following are the exact words printed, "I promised God that if he would open a way for me to sell it, I would give him 10 per cent commission. The same real estate agent that had said he would be unable to sell at the price I had asked called me long distance and advised me he had a buyer. The price he said they were willing to pay was approximately $500 more than I had originally asked. Only God could arrange such a transaction as this."

I have no doubt that certainty of God's special favor provided a warm, emotional glow for the seller—it's nice to make more money than you hoped for, particularly by way of heavenly salesmanship. But again to return to my acceptance of Camus' words "that we are prey to our own truths, once we have admitted them, we are slave to them," such impulsive nonsense is not for us.

Attempting to look in a reasonable way at whatever God's nature may be, the real estate transaction presents numerous problems: Why didn't God arrange the transaction at the asking price? The seller would still have been pleased and should have still given God 10 per cent commission; the buyer would have been $500 better off. This would have been a far more cooperative arrangement except for the real estate agent, who must have been both persistent and persuasive and got none of the credit, although I assume he got his commission in spite of divine brokerage.

When you think about it – is this God's nature, to help certain individuals out of a financial difficulty, while ignoring the prayers of hundreds of millions of others? I am at a loss to see how any thoughtful person, of whatever religious affiliation could say "Yes, God operates this way in commercial transactions."

I am captured by the reasonable belief that this attitude is a gross and offensive way of recognizing the nature of the creative and sustaining power that resides in our Universe. I do not quarrel with anyone's right to so believe; but to me it is utterly unreasonable and I am slave to such a way of thinking.

All persons have feelings. We would have similar feelings as the persons who hold such religious beliefs utterly unlike our own. The difference is interpretation. Individual minds attach different interpretations to the feelings.

Then too, tradition and culture, as well as our individual emotions play a strong directing role in the way our minds will interpret emotions that sometimes simmer, sometimes burn, sometimes boil. An Islamic mystic who has an overwhelming emotional experience of the reality of the divine, interprets the experience in Islamic terms – Allah is one, there is no other; and Mohammed is his prophet. The magnificent religious experiences of the ancient Hebrews recorded in the Psalms are interpretations guided by their belief in the one God of Israel. Roman Catholic mystics interpret the overwhelming emotional experience in the structure of the Trinity, the sacraments and the saints. Protestants may have a vision of the saving Christ of the gospels, the saving presence of God in the person of His son. Other mystics express the feeling in nature hymns or a poetic apprehension of a mystic one Humanity. But Buddhists do not have Christian religious experience; Christians do not interpret religion in Moslem terms.

The Free Church in a Changing World attempts to interpret these experiences in ways that answer the demands of reason and knowledge, because we profess to accept the requirements of scholarly disciplines and reason in our time. We should not be contemptuous of emotion because we are then scornful of a large part of the human experience. It is our task to interpret the emotions with knowledge and reason. That this may not always be comforting; that this sometimes requires a regretful farewell to comforting, but outmoded religious expressions may be an astringent experience, but it should not diminish the requirements to which we must measure. That is our way now; there is no turning back. Our thoughtful search must be for ways to announce the truth as we find it. We aspire both to integrity in the ways we think and honest expression for the ways we feel.

The Free Church in a Changing World seeks the reconciliation of creative thinking and emotional fulfillment without sacrificing either one. We should be lifted toward this task by the words Thomas Jefferson once used, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never win be." (quoted by Hofstadter, ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE, p. 300).

This leads us to the third point today. Truth, at least for us, must meet certain dimensions established by a reasonable mind and be so in tune with our feelings that our efforts to make truth live will not be impotent or irrelevant.

Pilate asked the perennial question, "What is Truth?" No answer has ever been stated that would satisfy all or even a large part of those who seek. J. B. Pratt, (op cit. p. 133), pointed to something we may look for when he wrote, "The things we believe must be true if we can see the truth; but if they are to have power over our emotional and volitional natures they must be made to glow with reality feeling." In that sentence he compressed several of the various measures of truth:

That the reality we experience can be accurately perceived in our minds.
That those beliefs which we hold cohere with each other.

In the Free Church, most of us have been particularly congenial to pragmatic truth – we are guided to actions which demonstrate that the proposition we believed was true. In the way we live, a truth must not only be accurate in its mental form but prove to be true when we act in terms of the belief.

Many of us are aware that there is a current of criticism in the flowing river of Free Churches to the effect that we are becoming increasingly "political." I believe this is inaccurately phrased. It seems to me that we are becoming increasingly issue-conscious. That is, in the course of the continuously erupting crises that involve people in their lives today, if our religious associations have vitality then there should be continuous displays of actable truth. If truth is not actable in terms of current issues, when or how can it be?

In her famous biography, "John Adams and the American Revolution," Catherine Drinker Bowen remarked in the Prologue, (xiv), "War with Britain was not a revolution – only a consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people, and this was effected from 1760 to 1755 - 15 years – and before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington."

This resembles what our way of truth is doing to us—making us issue conscious. Even as the American Revolution was in the minds and hearts of people for years before its expression, so the growing consciousness that religion can make sense and the application of reasonable thought to our emotions are setting us on a glad journey of actable truth. The opposite of feeling is not reason – the opposite of feeling is insensibility or unfeeling. The values we hold intellectually are quite in accord with the feelings we profess about the value and dignity of all persons. Thus our ways of truth have deepest meaning when they take form in the conduct we exhibit in the issues that matter.

In conclusion I would remind you of two statements. The first is from the Commission Report, THE FREE CHURCH IN THE CHANGING WORLD, (p. 27-28) "The religious enterprise should be one of active and fearless thought as well as purification of feeling and commitment of will."

The second is from that remarkable New Testament letter called 1st John, the fourth verse of the second chapter. Speaking of the God in whom this unknown Christian believes, he wrote, "He who says, 'I know him,' but disobeys his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps his word, in him truly love for God is perfected."

That unknown of an ancient world put a plain and simple stamp on the most difficult, but also most fulfilling of all religious experiences, that the truth is not in us unless we act it out in life.

The Liberal Style

September 29, 1963
Rochester

Sermon Series: The Free Church In The Changing World

II Theology and the Frontiers of Learning
4. The Liberal Style

When a creed cannot be admitted, can the Free Church indirectly achieve unadmitted conformity by establishing a "liberal style?" That is, although we spurn the sources of authority on which many denominations rely, do we substitute for such orthodoxy a "liberal style" which restricts us to certain ways of thinking and responding? If this is so, maybe we need the virtue of frankly admitting that no less than others we have our expected responses to certain stimuli.

Is there a liberal style? For example, the Commission on Race and Religion has reported that as best as can be estimated, there were 1600 or more Universalists and Unitarians who participated in the August 28 March on Washington or about 1 in every 100 of the total adults in our churches and fellowships across the Continent. This seems a strikingly high percentage. Is the liberal style one of active demonstration for issues currently believed of most intense importance? Or should the liberal style be appraised the opposite way – that 99 out of every 100 did not participate in the March on Washington?

Are large auditoriums with small congregations earmarks of the liberal style? In some cases, yes this one for example. In others, no, because facilities are strained to accommodate both children and adults.

Is the liberal style fashioned of radical ministers and conservative congregations? This depends on where you are and which end of the lens you peer through.

Or perhaps the liberal style comprises those who "disbelieve everything that everyone else believes and have a strong sustaining faith in they do not know quite what," to repeat Somerset Maugham's famous accusation.

In devoting this sermon to the "liberal style," I admit readily that when speaking of what the liberal style is, my own view is probably overweighted. I may be indicating more what I think the liberal style ought to be, rather than what it is. On this, I solicit your comments.

First of all, I commend that you reflect on the paragraphs that were read from THE FREE CHURCH IN THE CHANGING WORLD. There is punch in these paragraphs, particularly if you discover that there may be draperies to the liberal style which you never knew were wrapped about you.

To say a word about this analogy with style, if there is a liberal style, perhaps we can compare it to American clothing style. What is the American style of Fashion? My observations as a periodic observer awake puzzling questions. Is the American style the slacks and shorts women wear in suburban shopping plazas or the suits and dresses they wear when shopping down-town? High style on Michigan Blvd. or Fifth Ave. seems worlds apart from the old-fashioned, extremely modest garb worn by Amish folk in Pa. and Ohio. Yet Boulevarders, Avenuers and Amish are all Americans.

In spite of the pressure for uniformity exerted by all-pervasive commercial advertising, men striding Main St. in Rawlins, Wyo. are easily distinguished from their fellow Americans walking on Lexington, N. Y. C. So while I cannot assert specifically what the American style is, I have no doubt that Americans can be singled out by virtue of their styles.

There is similar difficulty mixed with reasonably certain identification in being sure that there is a liberal style marked by this-worldly concerns, strong ethical responsibility, deep commitment to democracy and a conviction that true community spirit has a religious base. As I attempt some elaboration of these marks of the liberal-style, it should come through to you that the style of liberal religion I have known is like Joseph's outer garment—a coat of many colors. (I like the older translation of Gen. 37/3; it lends itself to more picturesque illustration than does the phrases preferred by modern translators, "ornamental tunic" or "long robe with sleeves.")

This coat of many colors of the liberal style is not only our claim to distinction, but also it should be a source of pride. A coat of the liberal style is many-splendored; nevertheless, there should be continuous concern about the effect. Patriarch Jacob gave Joseph the coat because he loved him, but father Jacob could have been more concerned about the consequences of his gift. When young Joseph's arrogance clashed with the jealousy of his older brothers, there were disturbing consequences of deceit and violence.

How about the coat of many colors of our liberal style? Are the seams strong and flexible as well? Is there such a clash of adjoining colors that disharmony is apparent and useful service handicapped? My observation is that when the garment is torn up, the reason is not so much in its design as it is in the blundering way we deal with the most fragile of entities, each others' personalities.

One clear mark of the liberal style is an attention to this--worldly concerns rather than other-worldly hopes or fears. Whether or not there is a future life, the life we now live is the prime value. Because life is important, the issues and relationships that make life now more free, or more restricted, should be our concern; the attitudes that represent the difference between cooperation or conflict should have our attention; the decisions that make will create peace rather than bring war should feel our weight in this world.

On the whole our growing and changing complex of ideas has brought us to a common consensus that whatever experience [of personal immortality may await us after death], or silence of absorption into an impersonal universe, here on earth the way men think and live bring them the taste of heaven here and the bitterness of hell, here.

Now we should not be pretentious about this. Many persons whose religions seem to demonstrate much more emphatic hopes of heaven in another world and fears of hell in another world also act to bring greater growth of freedom, justice and happiness here on earth. If we maintain stoutly that because this is the only life that ever may be for us; thus we must do the very best we can for others and ourselves, the devout believer in personal immortality can live just as ethical and courageous a life here because he believes that the decisions he makes here, the things he docs here, the personal character he builds here will be his throughout eternity and thus is careful to practice good works.

Yes, a this-worldly concern is a mark of the liberal style, but a good honest look should stimulate a proper modesty. We are proud, rightfully of the great leaders of our present and past who have faithfully performed this-worldly acts for the benefit of people. But let not vanity shut the door to what really happens a great deal in human experience. An emphasis on this world can be an excuse for inertia as well as a reason for excellence. Most of us swing rather perilously between these extremities of inertia and excellence.

Some of you know that in this there has been a historical and continuing criticism of the old theology of Universalism. It goes like this: If God was sure to save all souls, then He would save the full scale sinner as well as the dabbler in little vices. So why worry about the degree of badness one reaches? Now while there is not the slightest evidence this theology of full and inevitable salvation for all souls contributed in the slightest to greater depravity, quite the contrary, it has had some influence in the building of complacency. Why try to save souls, when God would do it in His way?

Holding a not too dissimilar attitude, believers in a day of supernatural judgment, when the sheep and goats would be sorted out, were led to certain complacency also. If things were not made right here, then God would pass judgment on evil-doers at the great judgment day. If injustice prevailed here, why God's judgment would prevail in the afterworld and He would wipe away all the tears. But at least such willingness to postpone the righting of wrongs was in keeping with an other-worldly system of rewards and punishments. But we have no claim to such a heavenly escape ladder.

When the liberal style defends by actions an emphasis on this world as the scene of the only chance for righteous behavior that we yet know, or can be sure that we will ever know, then we are labeling ourselves as ones who are willing to exhibit more effort for excellence than excuses for inertia. But this is a reputation we must earn.

We will earn this respect for a this-worldly emphasis when we demonstrate both by what we say and do, that we will not accept or condone inhumanities, indignities and wrong-doing as being part of some inscrutable plan which will be revealed only in a supernatural way in an afterworld.

For many generations, the liberal style has been one which testified that we had nothing to fear from the wrath of God. God was love; God would save all souls. Whatever you may still think of such theological propositions, one of the marks of the liberal style today is a recognition that in this world evil injures and handicaps our own nature; that injustice and social wrong stirs a broth of violence and suspicion in society here.

Life-concern is part of the liberal style that we achieve only by our attention to living people and living issues. In every generation and in every place we must earn this. Praise marked on the tombstones of our forefathers in the faith is a mantle of tribute to them, not us, even though it may be easy to drape the honors of former prophets around us.

A concern for this world has the inevitable requirement of strong ethical responsibility. This strange and confusing world of 1963 is ours; each one of us can say, "I am responsible." In the "Myth of Sisyphus," (p.24), Albert Camus commented, with penetrating wisdom, "A man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them."

A deep ethical commitment to issues of this world would consistently create tyranny were it not for another mark of the liberal style – willingness to inquire as well as assert; to learn as well as teach; to be the anvil as well as the hammer. The phrase for this characteristic of the liberal style is a "deep commitment to democracy."

In the Christian gospel of Acts, there is a pertinent as well as touching episode. The new sect of the followers of Jesus were causing considerable disturbance in Jerusalem. The Roman police and religious councils were angry and ready to kill Peter, James and the others. But Gamaliel, (Acts 5) a learned and honored rabbi, spoke wisely to the agitated people. He told them to take care; that it would be evil and foolish to kill the members of the new sect, concluding, "let them alone; for if this plan or this undertaking is of men it will fail; but if it is of God you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God." The angry mob did not completely take Gamaliel's advice, for they beat the disciples, and in so doing strengthened the dedication of the new group. But Gamaliel was saying, they have the right to be wrong, let events demonstrate their rightness or their error.

The liberal style should continue to exhibit flexibility, giving me and you the right to be wrong, with decisions ever emerging from our free inquiries of each other as we are faithful to both the process of individual influence and growth in social relationships and achievement.

Here again we are tormented by devils of the ego. It is so easy to indulge in the self-deceit that because we have individual rights we can never be individually wrong. There are times when people remind me, there are times when I find myself fitting what was said of the French philosopher St. Simon, ''that even as a boy he confused a devotion to principle with sheer pigheadedness.''

Commitment to democracy sounds almost like a platitude but it simply involves the painful experience that many times when learning from each other, one must give up pride or prejudices which have been very dear and closely held. Yet this giving up the old ideas or ways that can no longer hold their own in the process of human-to-human encounter is difficult for most of us. In Shaw's "Major Barbara,'' (p. 24) Undershaft, the millionaire munitions maker tries to console his daughter Barbara when she is disillusioned by the policies of the religious rescue army. He says to her, "You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something."

Lastly, a mark of the liberal style is a recognition that true community spirit has a religious base. Let it be said again, of course we do not have this exclusively. There are many good religions which establish community spirit on religious foundations. For us, I believe we should aspire to a community spirit marked not alone by criticism of others, nor even by a plenitude of criticism of fellow liberals, but marked too by frequent and searching self-criticism.

Criticism is futile if it is expressed only to slug away constantly at how wrong everything is, or to establish a doleful setting for crying about the pity of it all. Criticism is for alliance with the best in as many ideas as we can share, for alliance in acts that we can perform together which will create in our homes, in our jobs and on our streets the living deposit of fine human experience which comes with doing what our minds believe is good. Such criticism and alliance might help us reach a quality stated so well by Henri Bergson, "Think as men of action and act as men of thought." (quoted by Key Reporter).

I believe the greatest beauty and utility of the liberal style is the sharing of our individual insights in such free inquiry and self-disciplined action as to begin to make us individually better persons in a world that must steadily increase the measure of freedom and equality in this world. To this end, of course, we must criticize, inquire and act as is within our capacity to inspire such goals. It was said of the famous craftsman and manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood, that he would stump about his pottery factory on his wooden leg, scrawling on china wherever he saw evidence of careless work the words, "This won't do for Josiah Wedgwood" Religion needs quality control, too.

This goal I give you, and for myself, that when new truths establish their claims, when new discoveries and freedoms point to better ways for all men, then we can say of the older, lesser ways, "This will no longer do for us." And that is the best of the liberal style.

Religion, Theology, Vitality

September 22, 1963
Rochester

Sermon Series – The Free Church in the Changing World

II Theology and the Frontiers of Learning
3. Religion, Theology, Vitality

For many persons, the most unsatisfied human need is a religion which is deep in the dimension of feeling, while being a religion which binds together beliefs in a bundle that satisfies the mind, and more than that, is a religion which expresses that feeling and that truth in action. Such a religion of heart, mind and hand is a pearl without price. My concern today is to speak of the search for such a religion of wholeness. In an effort to suggest a three-dimensional view of what religion is and does, three words are emphasized: religion, theology, vitality.

No realistic seeker can find a formula for religion which would satisfy everyone. However, no unbiased observer can point to any place in any time where humans have ever been and say of them, "they were not religious." Many persons there have been, and are, who have said in their parochialism, their arrogance, or their dependence, "ours is the only true faith; all others, are false." But the passing of time and the critical testing processes of human thought have always demonstrated that such claims of supernatural sanction were born of human experience, validated by human experience and the assurance was human faith.

If all men everywhere could agree on a definition of what religion is, our way of faith would be more clearly charted. But such agreement does not prevail. What religion is for you hinges on what definition of religion would draw your affirmation.

English Victorian, Matthew Arnold said, "religion is morality touched with emotion." In the same age, Schliermacher, the inspirational German theologian asserted, "religion is the feeling of absolute dependence on the divine."

These two points of view are separated from each other by a wide chasm of difference in meaning. But both are definitions of religion. A long list of definitions could be compiled to show both major and minor differences in the basic starting foundation for
constructing a religious faith. Is religion within the workings of the universe itself – that is, natural? Or is it a response to a power which is outside the universe and which controls the universe externally – that is, supernatural?

One could argue the spectrum of differences of what religion is from obscure shading to wide contrast, without securing any essential agreement except from those whose views are grouped most closely together.

But one can describe the quality of human experiences which are the common possession of persons and from which various evaluations of religion proceed.

First – while there are various living organisms in uncountable quantities, to the best of our knowledge, man is the only species which seems conscious of himself as a unique and distinct being, capable of reflecting on the universe in which he lives and making suppositions and abstractions about the cosmic order. Man says, "I am." Man asks, "From where do I come?" Man wonders, "Where do I go?" Awareness of the mysteries of origin and destiny provokes man to wonder, to suppose, to search, to believe that there is purpose to his life; to surmise that there is more to the relationship of his life to the universe than can be explained in mechanistic, fixed, unending cycles of sameness.

Furthermore, almost without exception, man relates his consciousness of himself and his relationship to others with religion. He seeks the sanctions of religion to support his solitary reflections and his standards of social behavior.

The experience of guilt, suffering, sorrow, joy, fear, courage, love, hate, pride, humility all seem to turn man to religion in order to justify, to purge, to forgive, to transform, to celebrate, to mourn.

Religion is the effort to take seriously the way one understands the universe; to look honestly at one's own self; to regulate one's conduct with others on a basis of moral values which are believed to be right, rather than just expedient.

The personal and social basis for religions is this overlap of self with other selves in a universe which conveys a message of overwhelming creativity, but a creativity we can get to know, or even share, in a very limited way. But persons starting with this core of experiences have always differed, always will, in their symbolic interpretation and expression of the basic stuff of religion. Their theologies differ.

If religion is the basic experience, theology is the human framework of words which attempts to construct an orderly philosophy which will explain, defend (and a good many times, rationalize) a particular way of comprehending the experiences of religion. A thorough theology will attempt to set forth, all that can be stated about the experience of religion. Theology is methodical theory about religious experience.

In other times, theology was called the "queen of the sciences." In our more practical times, there has been much doubt that theology either qualifies for royalty or resembles the measurable requirements needed to deserve the name "scientific." Professor Walter Kaufmann, (CRITIC OF RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY, p. 152) once commented in a rather skeptical vein, "theology is the finding of dubious reasons for what the theologian has believed all along."

While all theologies are subject to the attrition of changing times and new ways of knowing, there is just no real warrant for rejecting theology lightly, as though this were beneath the intellectual dignity of the liberal. Perhaps we tend to associate "theology" with dogmatic creeds; and because we disavow creeds, we find it easy to dispense with theology.

Theology may not be the queen of the sciences, but it ought to rank high on the list of challenging disciplines we respect. Theology attempts to affirm meanings with words., All language is symbolic; religious language particularly so. Words are essential for us to communicate our understanding of life. We need to try to interpret religious experience comprehensively in words. One of the finest statements I have read to support that proposition was contained in an article in SR, 8/31/63, by J. Donald Adams, noted New York Times book editor. His perception was keen when he said, "Whatever the present situation, words remain one of the most living things of man's creation; indeed, one might argue that they have more vitality than anything else we have fashioned. What else is there that seems to lead an independent life? Words do; they acquire strength and lose it; they, like people become transformed in character; like certain persons, they may gather evil about them, or, like others, prod our wits or lift our hearts." And again, "Our greatly increased interest in semantics, the science of meanings, is not, I think, a merely chance matter. Words are more important today than ever before, because men have become less united in their attitudes, and have increasing difficulty in understanding one another."

Words do have power. This is reason to plead for conscious effort to state one's faith, even though neither can one faith for all be ever stated nor reconciliation of contradictory assumptions be achieved.

Let me try to illustrate by one example which is a watershed of crucial differences of religious conviction. What is the absolutely correct name for the creative power that is responsible for creation and existence when all cause and effect is moved back to its ultimate genesis? Is it God? Om? Orenda? Mana? Yahveh? Christ? He? It? She?

The new translation of the Torah by the Jewish Publication Society of America contains a most stimulating translation and comment in the wonderful legend of Moses and the burning bush. When Moses inquires about the name he shall use for God to the Israelites, (Exodus 3/5 ff.), the new Torah translation of Exodus reads, "Thus shall you say to the Israelites, Ehyeh sent me to you. Thus shall you speak to the Israelites The Lord, the God of your Fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob has sent me to you: This shall be My name forever, This is my appellation for all eternity." In a footnote, the translators comment about the name Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, "meaning of Hebrew uncertain; variously translated: 'I am that I am,' 'I am who I am,' 'I will be what I will be, etc."

This explanatory footnote demonstrates how difficult theology can be. It is clear enough that the old scripture says that it was to be God's name forever, his appellation for all eternity – but the meaning of the word is uncertain. Indeed all the great mysteries of religious emotion have been variously translated in all times and places. The uncertainty of the old word in Exodus can be attributed in part to the awe which the Hebrews and others placed on the names of the supreme gods. That name was too sacred to be sounded. Is the experience less valid because the name sounds differently and the abstract concept varies?

There is almost complete agreement among Universalists and Unitarians that any claim to absolute religious knowledge can not be a legitimate bond among us. At the same time, we individually tend to become anxious unless we hew out words and attitudes that express for each a personal theology which interprets the basic stuff of religious experience.

Religion is basic; theology attempts to fit that into a framework of verbal statement. For the free church, that framework need satisfy only the one who has constructed the statement. But certainly the zest of religious relationships increases when the individuals expose their personal theologies to the searching examination of continuous test and discussion with others. Sometimes the keen edge of discussion cuts answers into questions. This may be trying at times, but good for our growth in mental maturity.

Religion will continue its basic encounter with the individual. Theology will always be an attempt to interpret that experience in words which explain, justify and satisfy, usually according to rules of reason, logic and the seat of authority for religion, as each person may decide that place of authority to be. At least that is so with us, for while most Uni[tarian]s Uni[versalist]s can be separated theologically into general grouping – theist, humanist, naturalist, existentialist, there is neither certainty nor limits to the imaginative ways that thinking persons can put into words what to them is the meaning of religious experience and ethical challenge.

Religious experience will continue as long as persons experience the emotions of the world. self and others. Theologies will maintain their inevitable places in the mental lives of individuals. Always there will be some who will accept a theology documented by something outside themselves: A church, a magnetic individual, a philosopher. There will be no lesser continuation of individuals who will accept no creed stated by others because they will always be unsatisfied with any theology, unless it bears the stamp of their own thoughts expressed by their own words.

The Study Commission Reports, THE FREE CHURCH AND THE CHANGING WORLD, emphasize how our unity is achieved by voluntary association of persons, who for the most part are numbered among those who insist on individual right to individual expression. There is almost no possibility that any verbal theology can become our official expression, either by vote or disinterest.

Yet all the interpretations of theology in whatever time or place amount to not much more than insignificance without constant vitality – the third word. Here, the dictionary directs our attention to the relationship of vitality to religion. Vital is from the Latin, vivere, "to live." The vital part is that on which life depends. Vitality is the manifestation of life – the animation which provides enduring power.

To give religion enduring power, vitality, there must be not only interpretation, that is, theology, but also and more important, there must be a lasting sense of moral obligation. Consider what the great religious leaders in all times have condemned without hesitation – the failure to do what is the right thing – consciously committing wrong against another. Sometime read through the New Testament gospels with a view to seeking out the things that Jesus believed to be wrong. You will find, I think, that his most severe words are spoken against those who defaulted moral obligations: "Woe unto him who shall harm any of these little ones, it were better for him to have a millstone about his neck and be dropped into the sea." "You have made my father's house a den of thieves."

The acts he flashed out against were violations of ethical conduct .

Religion may be more than morality – debates continue in every generation. But religion must be at least that – morality. Whatever you may label yourself, believer, non-believer, skeptic, agnostic, atheist – and you have a right to be any of these in this free church – if you are seeking a belief that will make you and your actions morally responsible and responsive, then you are on the road to a faith to which you may safely trust your life. The source of vitality in religion is the conduct it commands, the action it urges.

There is a strong spark of this ethical necessity in the early Christian tradition. James, believed by many to have been the brother of Jesus, became leader of the Jerusalem group of disciples sometime after the execution of Jesus. Unlike Paul, James was not greatly concerned with theology. You will remember some of his enduring words, (1/22) "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if any one is a hearer of the word and not a doer; he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing.... Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world...."

Not only the vitality of religion, but the strength or our strange, tense days, and uncertain future will be people like James who believe that religion is not alone a matter of saying, "I believe," but rather that religion is a constellation which involves feeling, thought, concern, action.

Moral actions for our time are not limited to caring for orphans and providing for those needy of food, clothing and care. The moral obligation of our time, whether or not we secretly would rather turn away, is to act in terms of our troubles.

How can one separate from religion the commitments needed to bring the Negro equality and opportunity? You cannot give any man citizenship, unless you also make him your neighbor, fully – feel his pain, feel his resentments, stand with him, grow in stature yourself by sharing his courage and patience. There are many other ways to put your faith in action, but indeed in this year of the 100th anniversary of the emancipation, no one has the right to overlook the chance to be a part of the struggle to overcome by being a good neighbor on your street with your welcome, at your job, in your school, in your church.

This religious vitality obtained by action has always been the message of the great prophets. I was reminded of a modem prophet, although he would think it an unlikely designation. Al Capp, the cartoonist who creates Lil Abner, is both ethically aware and perceptive. In this week's fantastic adventure, a Sultan has attempted to buy the little boy, Honest Abe and has taken him to a far country. Because of the oil-lands the Sultan owns, the matter has become sensitive diplomatically. An American is sent to straighten the matter out – and he is drawn suspiciously like a famous international ambassador—who says to Daisy Mae, "If you don't give up your child, the Sultan will sell his oil to the Russians. Our nation's safety depends on that oil and the world's safety depends on us. Is the life of one measly child worth the whole world to you?" And Daisy Mae snatches up Honest Abe and says emphatically, "It sho is."

And that I believe is the vitality of religion, to respond with, "it surely is," when the question arises about the value of one human life. This is why we should mourn the children of Birmingham and persist in the struggle to make all Americans free. In the third act of Maxwell Anderson's play, VALLEY FORGE, Mary Philipse brings General Washington and General Howe together and the British General learns that Washington will not surrender, dreadful though the suffering is at Valley Forge. Howe leaves and Washington thanks Mary for bringing him information that the French will help the Colonists. And he says, "it will be remembered." Mary then says,

"Why, then, I'm glad.
I know my own destiny, little though I may like it,
and it's not as high as yours. There are some men
who lift the age they inhabit—till all men walk
on higher ground in that lifetime."

Vitality becomes the third and great force for religion when we lift the age we inhabit. Unlike Washington's, the work of almost all persons will remain unknown and unsung, but that obscurity will not alter the spark of vitality of those who have not only believed, but acted that all men (may) walk on higher ground in that lifetime.

The Key and the Lock

September 15, 1963
Rochester

Sermon Series: The Free Church in the Changing World

I-The Church and its Leadership
2. The Key and the Lock

If you have made this Church your choice or interest because you believe that here your religious personality and conviction can expand in an atmosphere of creative change, unencumbered with the weight of outmoded doctrines or outlandish superstitions, then the key to your personality may well be an independent mind. You may hold strong convictions that your own individuality develops most fully in an atmosphere of freedom. You would respond to Emerson's challenge, "nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

When you consider what is valuable in the human religious heritage, you will more than likely attach unique importance to the deep convictions of the great prophets and teachers of religion who discovered themselves and the vision of their most high goals in solitary experience. Moses was alone when he discovered wonder and guidance were in the flaming image of the burning bush. From that moment on he was master of himself and servant to a great and difficult task. Elijah, alone at the entrance of a barren cave heard the still, small voice. Through that experience there was born in him the strength of spirit to meet and master the priests of Baal. Would Jesus have ever called fishermen away from their nets unless first he had mastered the solitary experience of the wilderness temptations? Could there have been the noble Buddhist faith had not the Gautama apprehended reality and made final choice, sitting alone under the Bo tree?

The mark of individual religious experience is cut deeply on the mind-set of religious liberals today. We tend to flare up defensively when encountering the person or group, even among ourselves, who believes less, or more, than we believe at that particular moment; or who phrases essentially the same basic structure of religious faith with differing words. If our religious convictions are keyed to individuality, then indeed we are proud of our freedom.

Centuries ago however, John Donne said the words which should always give us pause, “No man is an island....”

Inevitably when in association with persons whose motives are much the same, one is confronted with the formidable fact that between free individuals there will be an encounter of contrary conviction. A key is made for a lock. A key is filed to fit the tumblers of the lock. The orderly society is the master lock which will fit the keys of individuality when it permits the fullest maturity of individuality without shutting out mutual respect and affection.

This is a sermon dealing with the Church and its leadership. I would speak of the key – the individual in the light of the unending alterations of the lock of the society. Sometimes it seems that the locks are changed overnight. I would speak of the lock, the good society, which sometimes becomes rusted over because individuals will not use a key that has any chance of fitting; or because individuals will not even try their key in the lock to see if the tumblers will spring. I shall speak of the past as well as the present. Furthermore, while all this can be measured in terms of growth and change in religious institutions, I have no doubt that the principles involved apply to all human situations. To be human is to be free; to be human is to be involved and committed to some order of things. These statements are contradictory, yet each is true. When a person asserts vehemently that the Church does not speak for him, even though it is his church; or when a person, just as insistently asserts that the Church should stand forthwith for what HE believes, they are in the doorway fumbling with the knob. Is the lock defective? Or are they using the wrong keys?

The nature of the Church and its leadership should be considered in the light of the past as well as the present and future. There are several relevant illustrations of which I would remind you: the ancient nature of man and society, the atmosphere of the old testament times and the striking example of freedom and order in the 1st century Christian church at Corinth. One should look backward frequently enough so that one may neither be surprised overmuch at human behavior nor unduly complacent that we are the first generation to come to grips with the persisting problems of freedom in the social order.

First of all consider the basic stuff of human nature. Nothing that creates selfhood, individuality is born with us. Individuality is a product of the social order. Without the orderings of human society, we would not be persons; therefore without the structure of human society, all hymns to the free soul are like the chaff which the winds drive away.

Man has the biological potential for the mental ability and physical characteristics of human nature. But that potential from which the human self grows is realized only in society. The well-known example of the wolf-children of India was a pathetic and direct case. Some years ago, a missionary in India discovered two children living with wolves. One child was about eight, the other a year and a half. The baby died soon after being returned to civilization, but the older lived for nine years. When taken into an orphanage at eight, she could not stand or walk in any way like an eight-year-old child, but ran on all fours like a wolf. She looked normal but lacked any of the characteristics of the human self and it was too late for her to become a person. She had lived for eight years, but had not become a person. The famous educator, William H. Kilpatrick observes truly, “Thus does the life of man as man, in its distinction from the merely animal life, depend on the fact of selfhood achieved by the cooperation of others.” What makes human life distinct from animal: "Use of language, conscious intent, conscious conveying of meanings, making responsible decisions, conscience, making distinctions between right and wrong. . . ." (PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION,p. 42 and passim). None of the qualities unique to humanity and necessary for humanity can be acquired in isolation.

Thus there is a basic premise to the relationship of the key and the lock: Nothing that is human – human character, human decisions, human freedom, has any substance without the prior establishment of a social human order through which these individual characteristics can emerge.

Religion is not an exception. Henri Bergson summed it up succinctly when he observed, "...whether religion be interpreted in one way or another, whether it be social in essence or by accident, one thing is certain, that it has always played a social role." (TWO SOURCES OF MORALITY AMD RELIGION, p. 13).

Consider the life in old testament days as preserved for us by the scripture of the Hebrews. In the earliest days man survived because of the nature of the kinship and tribal groups. He did not survive alone.

With the overwhelming impact of the idea of the covenant between God and Israel, the nature of the community and its responsibility far outweighed any assertion of autonomous man. Again and again there was an emphasis that humanity is one particular and special strand in the whole nature of creation. The responsibility of the covenant community to Yahveh was a separation from non-human nature. Humanity had a history and a destiny. A continuous assumption ran through the scriptures of our particular heritage that no man alone lives a full life; fulfillment is achieved only by man in society. This was not to cloud the nature of man's individual responsibility. Man was responsible. Jesus, out of this cultural-religious heritage, insisted that individual man was capable of understanding the will of God; that individual man had freedom to choose and the ability to make the choice. But nowhere is there any suggestion that "alone and light-hearted I take the open road."

One of the most telling examples of the key and the lock occurred in the early Christian fellowship at Corinth. Paul's letters to the Christians at Corinth, as well as all other New Testament literature, provide proof that the early Christian churches were by no means united in themselves or co-ordinated fully with other Christian communities in matters of faith, worship, practice or behavior. The romanticism that distance in time lends makes it easy to think of all 1st century Christians as gentle, pious persons for whom there was no controversy, only commitment. Such was not the case. They did not need unanimity in order to be dynamic in growth or effective in society. The Corinthians vividly demonstrate what one scholar has called, "the varieties of New Testament religions." Persons concerned with the church and its leadership, or any social form and its leadership would do well to read Paul's letters from that point of reference. His correspondence illuminates both the complexity of the problem and the basis of its resolution.

In the year 50 a.d., or thereabouts, Paul came to Corinth to visit the Christian Church which had organized in that cosmopolitan Roman city of commerce and culture. After 18 months in Corinth, Paul continued his missionary travels and went to Ephesus. From there, not more than two or three years later, Paul engaged in correspondence with friends at Corinth because he had heard of quarrels, disorder, misbehavior and lack of discipline in the Corinthian Church. What survives of this correspondence, contained in the New Testament literature as 1st and 2nd Corinthians, has been called by one scholar, Dr. Kirsopp Lake, as the "history of a quarrel." Although this is correspondence of an ancient age, written in language most easily understood in those times, not ours, we may look searchingly at it for it describes the troubles a particular church had with individual freedom in a functioning society.

The central source of trouble resided in the nature of belief. Because believers had the religious experience of the "new law in Christ," they felt freed of the old laws. This was interpreted by some to be a charter of freedom from all restraints of church government, social order, moral habits and consideration of others. In effect, their theology was, "love God and do what you like." Some, the "spirituals," had experienced religious ecstasy, spoke in tongues, that is, ecstatic gibberish, were convinced that God communicated to them directly and individually. Therefore, the church as community had no powers of control over behavior or church discipline.

Paul rebuked these “spirituals” and uncontrolled converts. He catalogued their wrongdoing with considerable detail, injecting advisory remarks that have become some of the classic aphorisms of Christianity. E.G., (1st C. 10/23), "all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful." (4.2) "Moreover it shall be required of stewards that they be found trustworthy."

The 13th chapter, justly celebrated as among the finest examples of literature, was not a spontaneous, poetic hymn to love, or a sudden flight of religious inspiration. Paul's preface is, "I will show you a more excellent way." When Paul referred to those who spoke with the tongues of men and angels but who have not love, he was addressing directly those who believed they could love God and do what they like. They had the key of individuality, but not the lock of order.

There are other facets to this many-sided dilemma in human affairs. By the 16th century, a.d., the church order had become so dominating that the Reformation was needed to restore the key of individual judgment.. Martin Luther maintained that salvation was dependent on individual faith, not the sacraments of a church.
Some of the left-wing churches of the Reformation, in which our roots are also, went to extremes that Luther rejected. Indeed most religious revolts have been against overemphasis on the institution. There is something about institutional structure that does not like the free individual. In Colonial New England, religious requirements were based largely on the faith and order of the Puritan Church with its rigid Calvinistic doctrine and order. So much did Colonial establishment dread individual inspiration and fear the power of the lone person's inner religious certainty, that such Christians as Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson and others were persecuted savagely. Jos. Gatchell of Marblehead, Mass, in 1684, was put in stocks and his tongue pierced with red hot irons for the heresy of cherishing individual conviction that all souls would be saved.

The reaction came in New England, as it always must everywhere for excesses. Ralph W. Emerson, Thoreau and others were courageous and articulate prophets of the belief that man's destiny was most fully achieved and God's will done in the development of the individual's courage, integrity and solitary judgment. Emerson's essay on “Self-Reliance” is the classic example of the able mind denouncing the foibles and weaknesses inevitable to any social order:
"Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string." (p. 166)
"Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members." (p. 168)
^'Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." (p. 168)
"...you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it."

(Those of you who love Emerson will recognize that this is but a bare sampling of his innumerable trenchant sentences.)

All the foregoing brings us to today's "Free Church in the Changing World," the nature of the Church and its leadership. The issues are ancient, but always must be freshly resolved. Otherwise a person will be unable to find his place.

In the course of events, the churches of the Unitarian Universalist Association have come to place authority for group action and decision on a way of functioning, rather than a way of believing. That is, participation is voluntary. The person decides whether he shall be a member; not the church, ruling either on his belief or other qualification. The basic condition is to follow the self-governing processes—as Angus MacLean said in connection with religious education, "the method is the message." Ecclesiastically, we believe in majority rule, with minority right always protected so that persuasion and interchange of opinion will not cease.

This by no means can create religious Utopia. People feel deeply about beliefs. When there are glaring differences, the democratic process may solve the constitutional nature of the problem, but in itself will not heal the wounds left by intellectual and emotional strife.

Henry Nelson Wieman, one of the eminent philosophers of liberal faith, in his book, THE SOURCE OF HUMAN GOOD, (p. 39), wrote of the creative power that seemed to arise in the group relationship of Jesus and his disciples: "(Jesus) split the atom of human egoism, not by psychological tricks, not by intelligent understanding, but simply by being the kind of person he was, combined with the social, psychological and historical situation of the time and the heritage of Hebrew prophecy. Thus there arose in this group of disciples a miraculous mutual awareness and responsiveness toward the needs and interests of one another."

In the winning and losing of issues in constitutional processes of government—political or religious, not only the letter of democratic method, but also the spirit of mutual awareness and response is needed. That this search for community feeling may seem optimistic, even fatuous, in the harsh quality of national and international struggles is an index, perhaps, that either our goals aren't grand enough or that we do not seek enough joy in human enterprise.

Earlier I said that Paul's more excellent way also suggested the way to bridge the gap between the free individual and the good social order. I'm sure it is obvious to you, too. Faith in the democratic process, yes; hope in the solutions arrived at in the free market of ideas, yes; but underlying all this, love, or good-will as the greatest factor in the human scene. If the losers in a political struggle accepted the situation as one wherein their cause must have had weaknesses which needed new strength; if the winners in a political struggle embraced their victory as opportunity to demonstrate to the opposition that there is creativity and hope in the case they have lately opposed, we would be living the more excellent way.

In the Free Church our faith is in the process which creates a church order committed to promoting experiences of value to human beings in this world. We affirm that the sabbath was made for man. There is no loss of our individual fulfillment or private freedom when the feeling of community is abundant enough among us to surround divided decisions with awareness and response. The creation of such feeling of community among free persons is the most difficult and desirable goal for persons who place their religious trust in a way of living together, rather than on a way of words or a way of tradition.

There is no likelihood that in predictable time we could carve out a verbal creed, even if we would. Certainly there are sound reasons for not establishing a creed, even if we could. The church and its leadership must depend on the more excellent way of love.

Maxwell Anderson, the late American dramatist in his play, "Joan of Lorraine," in Act II, Rehearsal Preface, has Masters the Stage Director say, after there has been an observation that the play is pessimistic, "More and more, men are going to realize that it’s our destiny to be in the dark and yet go forward – to doubt our religions and yet live by them. To know that our faith can't be proved and yet stick to it. Unless it's a bad one.”
Elling: "But how do you know a bad faith from a good one?"
Masters: "I can't tell you. Nobody can tell you. But you have to know, because you're held responsible if you follow a bad one."
• • • •
Tessie: "But who holds us responsible?"
Masters: “We do. The human race. We hold each other responsible."

This is our task in the Free Church in the Changing World, to hold each other responsible in the more excellent way.

Social Change and Open Religion

September 8, 1963
Rochester

Sermon Series - The Free Church in a Changing World
1. Social Change and Open Religion


What is changing in the world? What is free about the Church? Why did the study commissions of the Unitarian Unitarian Association place these two ideas together in establishing a title for the most serious self-examination ever of our liberal faith and order? In the first of the sermon series which attempts to evaluate liberal religion in the light of these extensive studies, I would like to place the methods of our faith in the context of our world today — our hopes about it, our fears for it, the issues which should stir us most and the goals we have in view as we go to our jobs, clean the house, read books, encountering the pageant of unending personal experience.

In the last generation or two, there has been more rapid social change than in all of man's history. Change occurs when inventions and engineering developments accumulate, causing an increasingly wide-spread application of new machinery, housing, transportation, strikingly greater and faster means of communication. We drive automobiles which were only the speculations of fantasy writers, 70 years ago; our aircraft and space projects were predicted only by science fiction writers; only a few years ago our house-hold appliances would have seemed possible only with an Aladdin's lamp and a miraculous genie. But these have become commonplace.

Instead of hand-written letters laboriously transported by stage-coach or slow train, our communications ride the air-waves with the speed of light. When 200,000 people marched on Washington, August 28, to testify to their belief that there should be jobs and freedom for all, the events were televised that same day to Europe via Telstar. Everyone of you could lengthen the list of marvelous change almost endlessly.

There is importance in noting that the scholars call this age of discovery and development, "social change," not "social progress," or "social evolution," as was true with many observers of, say, 100 years ago. We have come to recognize that change in itself is not necessarily progress in the things that matter most to the enhancement of the human family. Cultural change in itself is not necessarily evolution, unless the family of man clarifies standards of individual and group morals and insists that engineering changes or scientific discovery do not degrade the best standards of morality. "Social change" carries no moral directive or ethical commitment – and this is one of the reefs on which the modern world can be wrecked.

It is possible to use several central illustrations; e.g., the spiraling armaments race and nuclear sweepstakes, to which the present test ban treaty bears such an important moral relationship. The idea of the population explosion could be developed and its indubitable tie-in with the amount of resources available for humans. But because the March on Washington is hugely present in the minds of so many Americans, let me speak of that as an example of effects of social change and the morality needed to embrace that change profitably for the human family.

Not only do we have the research and engineering to create an economy of abundance of material things, but also television, newspapers and all other public media, proclaim that the American way of life includes ingenious and practical appliances, excellent housing, becoming clothes, luxurious, but "inexpensive" cars, luscious foods and fine drink. For much of the population this is a reality; but for a considerable disinherited minority, these comfortable and lush surroundings are a mirage.

This leads to another observation. Even though the amount of physical change and new material development dwarfs the imagination, at the same time, the majority of persons are inclined to resist change when it applies to ideas or behavior.

In spite of the tremendous amount of invention and accumulation of goods, man's nature seems to have changed biologically hardly at all. In the new world history sponsored by UNESCO, Jacquetta Hawkes and Leonard Wooley in the opening volume remark how man in his earliest days followed the general habits he obeys today. The arts of painting, dance and music existed; man tried to establish a stable family and workable social groupings. He devised clothes that were ornamental as well as useful, lived in houses on the ground, cooked his food and trained his children. He wondered at the mysteries of seasonal and life cycles and devised the rituals of religions.

There was within him a complex of emotional reactions, aggression, fear, the desire to escape, the reluctance to change. In primitive days these impulses served him well. If he could not club the animal or outlander who threatened him, he could run and hide. The nonchanging tribal relationships provided stability; instinctively man was slow to change. This biological heritage is still strong within us, even though mastered by social controls for the most part. But, as the renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Joost Merloo observed, “the most dangerous thing in the world is the mixture of technological know-how with undisciplined passion.”

When we bring together this impressive roster of social changes and the slowness with which man changes his instinctive ways, there is created the setting for social conflict that now exists when the Negro and other minority group members insist on freedom now, equality of voting opportunity now, equality of job opportunity now, equality of educational opportunity now.

The social changes needed are not simple, nor as easily achieved as may sometimes be proposed. Andrew Cordier, for many years a highly-placed UN official, had a pertinent story about wrong ways to effect social change. (TC record, April,63) "Many years ago a missionary, wishing to strike at the heart of a social structure of a large tribe, converted the head of the tribe, a certain King Charles. In the baptismal rite, the missionary exclaimed ‘I baptize you Charles King.’ Now both names are honorable, but the use of the baptismal rite to bring about instantaneous and sweeping social change led to serious and unexpected complications."

But the disinherited minorities no longer will tolerate a policy of slower, later or partial achievement of their goals. At the same time the favored majority, comfortable middle class or upper, resists the precipitous changes which the times demand. Again this confrontation of differing attitudes can be explained in the nature of our behavior as human beings. No matter where you may look in the world, those who find life satisfactory as it is, with enough of the world's goods and a favored position in the social situation, will resist change. It is not that they necessarily cherish sinister plans to keep the disinherited minority in an inferior position, but rather the world they know is well defined; the goals they can choose have accurate road maps; they can guide their conduct and effort with reasonable assurance that they will harvest the fruits of the seeds of effort, knowledge and persistence.

On the other hand, the disinherited, the Negro and other minorities in our country do not possess such plain guides. Communication and consumer advertising has brought the image that there is a comfortable, equal world that is proclaimed as the “American Way.” By specific American philosophical premises, The Constitution, The Bill of Rights, The Emancipation Proclamation, as well as the art of commercial persuasion, the minority group member has come to believe, and rightly so, that these values, goods and position are rightfully his, also. Thus the minority group responds with action when there are points of reform or revolution which crystallize and activate his just hopes for equality.

To this recipe for misunderstanding between the comfortable contented and the deprived disinherited, one should add the ingredient that there is great emphasis in our science, invention, engineering and social sciences on research. There seems to be a relationship between this willingness to experiment and develop and a readiness for social change.

In his book on the Black Muslim movement in America, Erik Lincoln has an illustration which digests this dilemma. "The American conscience is like a Georgia mule, drowsing under a mulberry tree: it will twitch when the fly bites, now here, now there, and so to sleep again." But we may doubt that the American conscience will be permitted much more time to sleep on civil rights or relapse again into postponement.

The catalogue of incidents, not only the March on Washington, but also Alabama, Folcroft, Pa., the issues of de facto segregation in education and job opportunity, have not only produced pickets, but will again and again in the weeks to come. In his wars with his enemies, Joshua acquired a supernatural advantage when Jehovah made the sun stand still long enough for him to carry out his plans and defeat the enemy. No sun will stand still for the struggle for civil rights to be unduly prolonged.

These then are the winds of change .in our time — there is the smell of storm in them and also the fragrant refreshment of a new day. We should be aware that the change will not be postponed. The choice for most Americans is whether the struggles will be carried out by the enlightened, reasonable, non-violent persistent ones for freedom and equality, or will be established by a fanatic solution by those who have given up hope that the privileged will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the disinherited to overcome.

It is in the light of these choices, methods and values that I would have you look this year at the free church – the free church in this changing world. Albert Camus in his essay, "Helen's Exile," (p.l35) commented, "In a certain sense, the direction history will take is not the one we think. It lies in the struggle between creation and inquisition." Because of our willingness to be disciples of advancing truth, if we act reasonably, as well as maintain that we count on reason, if we do set supreme value on the individual dignity and worth of every human individual, as well as say we do, we in the free church have an opportunity to be numbered among the creators of better ways and new emancipations in this changing world.

What is free about the Free Church? Not financial, we have just passed the plate, and a budget is a budget. Hot irresponsibility, because no religion deserving the name can be irresponsible. Not license, because the best faiths are disciplined — self disciplined, when they call forth the best from their followers.

We are non-creedal. No formula of words represents our bond of fellowship. What should be perpetually implicit in our disavowal of verbal formulas or creeds is an openness to any new truths which may give guidance to ways we may make real in life the ideals we profess. The free church has nobly begun an atmosphere of resistance to hardening concepts. We will break even with "our own orthodoxies," when knowledge and experience demonstrate that we must turnabout.

In the free church we share an increasing reluctance to being trapped by words. Because the ancient terms of religion mean innumerable things to uncountable men, we are reluctant to speak of Salvation, Prayer, Atonement, Sin, God, Grace, without being careful to explain just what these words mean to us. Thus, we have given up for the most part the emotional comfort of using words which the centuries have invested with sanctioned comfort — as though by repeating the word salvation it was somehow achieved. This is one of the expensive price tags of the Free Church. In order to resist the rigid orthodoxy, we must explain what the old words mean to modern man in an age of fantastic knowledge and specialization. We need a religious vocabulary with meanings to which we agree.

But the glory of this openness, this refusal to accept words on the merit of the ancient emotions buried in them, provides us with the great privilege of hospitality to new ways of helping to make the world of our experience one in which meaning and purpose increase.

The free church is not an anarchy wherein every man does that which is right in his own eyes in the operation and decisions of the free church society. We are willing to bear the risks of democracy in the decisions which affect our lives as members of a free church. The risks of democracy are great; but if they prove not the best in the little church society, which could be embryonic of a larger way for men in all their affairs, then the whole human venture is sadly wrong about the ability of man to develop maturely in the process of making real his high purposes.

Of these things in the free church, we shall have much to say in the coming weeks. But let this be said: conviction for the individuals in the free church in the changing world is not a pedestal to stand where one overlooks the world; but conviction is a direction on a highway with other persons who travel toward their fulfillment and goals. That we disavow, most of us, a supernaturalism outside this world, in no way destroys high goals. We too should say with the Scottish theologian, P. T. Forsyth, "Unless there is within us that which is above us, we shall soon yield to that which is around us."

To justify the support of thinking persons in an age of rapid social change, the Free Church in the changing world must be among the institutions whose platforms and labors proclaim the great goals of a prevailing justice among free men as the foundation of religious experience and spiritual fulfillment. Without hesitation and without rest, the great consensus of decision of the individuals whose allegiance comprise the Free Church must support the aspirations of the disinherited to achieve their full rights now. Without such continuous affirmation and corresponding action, the high-sounding ideals, and hopes of the Free Church are but fraudulent platitudes. With such central involvement with the good struggles of persons, the great gifts of spiritual fulfillment will be ours. By spiritual fulfillment, I speak of the courage that is victorious over fear, the abiding hopes that rise eternally from the ashes of despair, the love that needs no applause, but only the opportunity to serve. When we identify with the struggle to overcome, all the great spiritual fulfillments will come to us as surely as the uninvited sun turns the darkness of night to the light of the new day.

In all this encounter with social change, the Free Church says, you need not be alone. It is the united conviction and common action of persons convinced of the high values of religion that bring a glow of fellowship to our activities. In the time of the French philosopher, St. Simon, some of his followers organized a rather eccentric religion, which was well-meaning, but short-lived. There was one symbol which is somewhat stimulating when considering individuals in a free, liberal Church. The followers of St. Simon wore a special waistcoat, which could neither be put on or taken off unassisted. Each had to help the other, emphasizing the dependence of every man on his brother.

Special waistcoats would have little appeal for us; but we must never forget in all our individuality of conviction and pride of intellect, that in the efforts we find worthwhile for ourselves and of benefit to our times, we are dependent each of us, on the other. In such interdependence, we see epitomized both the distinction and value of the Free Church in the changing world.

The Free Church in a Changing World

Sermon Series
Rochester

Preface

The Study Commissions appointed by Unitarian Universalist Association presented their Final Reports, “The Free Church in a Changing World,” to the General Assembly of the U.U.A in May, 1963. Paperbound copies are available on order from the Universalist Bookstore (Suzanne McNamara, HO 7-5224) at 90 cents a copy. You may wish to order now in order that you may have a copy for reference and comment.

Believing that these reports represented an important examination of the faith and order of Universalist, Unitarian churches and fellowships, a number of sermons were given dealing with beliefs commonly shared, policies usually followed, characteristic and changing worship forms and actions believed to be vital to our faith.

Although the commission reports were the inspiration and motivation for this series, the effort was neither strongly critical nor wholly laudatory. The objective was to share the ideas that stir wide-spread affirmation, as well as considerable disagreement among us; and to communicate not only commentary but also conviction.

Carl J. Westman,
Minister