The Disciplines of a Liberal

January 13, 1963
Rochester

Sermon Series: Our Judeo-Christian Heritage
16. The Disciplines of a Liberal

In this sermon series on our Judeo-Christian heritage, it has seemed to some of you that I have been working both sides of a street named “contradiction.” It has been correctly perceived that I have upheld two values as primary: (1) the sovereignty of individual conscience and (2) the supremacy of a community which has agreed on a covenant binding all members. I have praised such exemplars of independent conscience as Savonarola and such examples of community as the congregational system.

Guidance by individual conscience can create as well as solve problems. There is difficulty in being a free individual in an organization, which because it is a social structure, necessarily places certain limitations on its members.

The resolution of this seeming contradiction is found only in the disciplines which the liberal person is willing to impose upon himself. Therefore, I would have you consider freedom not only as a sovereign right, but also as a corporate restraint. The consequences of this two-sided definition provide us with temptations to resist and principles to follow.

Our religious traditions have brought us to the common affirmation that the authority for religious truth grows out of our personal convictions. Most of us believe, too, that all beliefs must be held tentatively. Truth ever moves on. Because of this tentative picture of conviction, we must recognize that a certain character of relationship with others must be maintained in order to keep a balance between authority of truth that is known and the authority of truth that is to be known. There is an old proverb from the Near East, “when thy purpose is effected, beginneth its decay.” The wisdom of this old saying is found in its positive implication that we need new goals and re-defined purposes to urge us forward constantly.

Everyone has a need to be free. The infant struggles against restraint; the child wants to explore beyond the limits set by parents; the adolescent rebels against the ideas of the preceding generation; the young person is eager to try out newer ways which may make life more abundant and exciting than it was for his parents or grandparents. When the Pharisees criticized the disciples of Jesus for harvesting grain on the Sabbath, Jesus reminded them that David had broken the ritual laws in order that his men might eat when hungry. When Jesus concluded, “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,” he made a double emphasis that we have a right to change old rules and that this freedom is to be used to meet human need.

This right to be free is dramatically illustrated by the line of prophets who obeyed the “still, small voice,” even when that obedience required rebellion against an established order. Amos, Elijah, Judas Maccabeus, Jesus, Servetus, Joan of Arc – in these and many other instances, we see demonstrated the human need to be free, individually.

“This above all, to thine own self be true. Then it shall follow as night follows day, thou canst be false to any man.” When Polonius, pompous and self-righteous, gave this advice to his son, Laertes, he did not deal with the difficulty that while we may not be false to our fellow-man in being true to our own self, we may be in direct conflict with the self that our fellow-man feels to be his true self. This is the rub, for even as we have need for freedom, we need fellowship also. Few of us choose the life of the lone wolf or the recluse. Thoreau left town to go to his cabin on the shore of Walden Pond as an experiment in living alone, but the time came when he returned to Concord.

In the precarious balance between the necessities of both individual freedom and corporate fellowship, we should resist the temptation to remain quiet because of a false notion of tolerance when ideas or programs are advanced which violate our individual convictions.

In John Steinbeck’s novel, THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT (p. 174), the hero, Ethan, listening to the jets whine overhead in the night muses, “it’s not the jets so much, but what their purpose is. When a condition or problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But as it goes inward and mixes up with a lot of things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something done – anything before it is all gone.”

Tolerance is a vice, not a virtue, when it is a gag, self-imposed on the excuse that harmony may thereby be maintained. As Steinbeck observed, such mistaken silence goes inward and creates anxiety and ill-conceived action. Freedom is not simply the right of choice, but the obligation to choose between important and distinctive alternatives, clarifying the decision by spirited argument.

If we cannot accept differences of opinion among us, then the foundation of our liberal faith is built upon sand and not upon the rock. Conformity and submission for the sake of a superficial harmony does no service either to the liberal church or a free America.

In this dilemma between freedom and covenant, the second temptation to resist is to be content with shallow thinking. Because we tolerate one another’s differences of opinion, we are tempted to deceive ourselves that it is not important what we believe. In our traditions, the church that submerges differences will sacrifice much of the freshness and value of the enterprise particularly if it stops thinking about subjects, fearful that deep thought may disclose profound differences. The value of the liberal institution to ourselves, to our children and to all who need faith and freedom in faith will be lost if our thinking is predominantly shallow.

Then there is the temptation to anarchy where everyone being true to his own self takes off in a different direction. When anarchy prevails, there will be no common core of purpose to stimulate the advance of the movement along the path that will provide continuing value to the world. The dilemma is possible that our thinking will be so different that nobody does anything. We will be like a modern Don Quixote, charging at various intellectual windmills or bizarre phantoms, with the result that no one will see or take an interest in the reality that there is a “power of men of good will and sacrificial spirit to overcome evil.”

This entire problem inevitably comes to focus in the reconciliation of the free individual in the disciplined organization. Of the innumerable definitions of freedom, one given by Ralph Barton Perry is instructive here, “freedom is the exercise of enlightened choice.” In a free society, discourse in freedom is maintained by those, who by thought, voice and act make high principles operational.

A fable is illustrative. The famed Rabbi Akiba was a tower of strength for independence in the days when Palestine was ruled by Rome, in a time when religious congregation as well as instruction in the Law were forbidden. Rabbi Akiba gathered disciples clandestinely in a cave so that he might teach the precepts and heritage of Jewish law and prophecy. Another Rabbi, less courageous, sought to discourage Akiba. He advised the equivalent of “don’t stick your neck out, when the tyranny passes, we will start teaching our religion again.” Rabbi Akiba answered the safety-minded colleague with this fable:

A fox walking by a pond noticed that the waters were agitated. Seeing a fish moving to and fro as if in fear, the fox asked, “from whom are you fleeing?”

The fish answered, “I am seeking to evade the nets which are set out to capture us.”

The shrewd fox then said persuasively, “Come up here on dry land and you and I shall dwell in peace.”

But the fish was not deceived, “you who are famed to be the craftiest of all creatures are proving yourself stupid. If we fear for our lives in the water, which is our natural home, how much more should we dread the elements on the dry land, which are naturally so hostile to our existence?”

What water was to the fish in the fable, so is the environment of democracy to us in the free Church. If we leave our natural element seeking certainty, we shall find we have neither assurance nor freedom. Freedom is always established by struggle; maintained only be effort and co-operation. Even when struggling against totalitarian ideas and movements, we must not adopt the vices of tyranny. Our larger loyalties to our faith demand that we keep steadfast allegiance to the principles that justify our existence.

In the liberal church our task is to ensure that the need for freedom can be satisfied and the necessity for fellowship achieved, while avoiding organizational chaos on the one hand and authoritarianism on the other. Free individuals can find the fellowship and the social structure they need in the liberal churches – as long as four conditions are maintained.

First, the liberal church must remain a voluntary society. Some churches assert that a person baptized in infancy is a member for life, but this is not so with us. A person becomes a member of the liberal church by his free choice. He is not required to suppress any convictions he might have had about man or God. He need not remain mute about great convictions for the sake of superficial harmony, because membership does not depend on any particular interpretation of history or any one appraisal of personal experience.

There was a time in our country when financial support of the Church was compulsory. This practice still prevails in many countries, but we cannot approve the practice then or now. If we cannot exist through voluntary acts of membership and support, it would be better to close our doors until the time when a more vigorous generation shall re-assert individual conscience in the voluntary community.

The second principle which enables the liberal church to reconcile the voice of conscience with orderly organization is respect for the opinion of others. This may seem elementary, even trite, but when this condition does not prevail, the church is ruled either by a tyrant or a clique. As we all know, there is a great variety of opinions among us on matters political, economic and social as well as religious. There is no more difficult discipline of fellowship than to understand and accept a fellow-member who presents an opinion we loathe or fear. My convictions may be anathema to another, but unless he admits that I, too, have a right to conviction and accepts me in spite of disagreement, then there is no possibility of reconciling the free individual and the disciplined organization.

I might not regret that a fellow liberal believes God to be an elderly, bearded male who oversees an auditing system on the sins and follies of human beings, preparing due bills for the day of judgment. That person might feel exasperated with me because I do not identify God in personal terms, but rather as verbally, an inadequate symbol for the glory of creation, the mystery of growth and the wonder of sacrificial love. In order to fulfill this second condition of the free individual in the disciplined organization, each of us must not merely tolerate differences, we must respect the persons who differ from us.

Adolf Harnack (MISSION AND EXPANSION OF CHRISTIANITY, p. 147 ff) was persuaded that the “gist of Jesus’ teachings was to enforce brotherliness and ministering love.” After comments on the gospels, Harnack observes, “Brotherliness is love on a footing of equality.”

Fellowship in our particular inheritance from the great tradition is never an indication of required agreement, but the reality of a unity which surrounds and ennobles differences.

Nevertheless, irreconcilable differences would be impossible of healthy solution and would result in organizational disruption unless we maintained the third condition, the principle of majority rule. This principle is different between the law-abiding dissenter and the criminal.

The criminal tries to accomplish his desires by breaking the laws and rules that the majority have authorized, directly and indirectly, through legislative and judicial process. The dissenter, if he is in disagreement with some laws, wants to change them by persuasion, experiment, education; living with the majority until his minority can lawfully win a majority. In the liberal churches, we seldom find criminals breaking laws, but occasionally, we meet people who, though in the minority, feel injured if their wishes do not prevail. President John Quincy Adams was a large, heavy man. So frequently was he on the losing side when a congressman, that once when asked, “when will you ever be in the majority?” He replied, “when votes are weighed, not counted.”

We can throw our weight around on policy disagreements, but unless we abide by majority rule, then there is no possibility of organization which is both democratic and orderly. This is the application of humility to our corporate life together. Humility recognizes that there is a wider circle that circumscribes all our individual egos. We like to believe that when our candidate loses an election, or when our pet ideas do not prevail, “well, all the darn fools aren’t dead yet.” The fact is, however, that those who disagreed may possess just as generous a share of native intelligence, as broad an education and instructive experience as ourselves. The majority are not always right, but when the opportunity exists for the free communication of ideas, then the majority will make more wise decisions than foolish ones.

This principle is justified in history. Thomas Jefferson expressed it well when he said on one occasion, “the people of a country are the only safe guardians of their own rights, are the only instruments which can be uses for their own destruction.”

There is a pivotal qualification: in order to maintain the reality of the free individual in the disciplined organization where there is voluntary association, respect for differing opinions and reliance on majority rule, leadership must be entrusted to those who believe in these foregoing principles. Persons of any and all opinions should be welcome. We should be inclusive. But we would be undermining our liberal tradition if we chose leaders who did not subscribe to the conditions which make our organization possible. Thus a liberal congregation would be acting foolishly to elect a minister who disavowed the organizational rules of the free church government. Such a person should be welcome, but not given leadership. A liberal organization would strike serious blows to its own cause if it elected trustees who disbelieved in the principle of majority rule and sought consciously to circumvent it.

This is probably as much dogma as we can allow, but unless we are realistic enough to recognize this, then we will not survive as an organization that prizes individual conscience and values organizational self-discipline. Only free individuals working in the spirit of democracy, who while treasuring our liberal heritage of the past, will change it where it needs changing in our time; and pass living freedom and a respectable institutional heritage on to our children and theirs.

All these disciplines find their ultimate authority in our belief in the supreme worth of every human personality. The rough street of contradiction can be made smoother by building it on the primacy of people. Freedom, self-discipline, respect and self-respect, majority rule, responsible choices of leadership – all these are founded on this base which Harnack defined as “brotherliness is love on a footing of equality.”

Dr. Brock Chisholm, one time head of the World Health Organization, noted Canadian psychiatrist and religious liberal, told a charming anecdote which illuminates this basic assumption we share. When making some inspection tours in Pakistan for W.H.O, Dr. Chisholm was being shown through a large hospital. He noticed the doorway to one ward was screened off and that while at this point in the corridor his guide tried to divert his attention to another direction. Dr. Chisholm perceived that there was something they did not want him to see and as a good inspector, insisted on visiting the screened-off ward.

His guides were apologetic, saying they were a bit ashamed at the old methods used in the ward, a maternity wing; they hoped soon to get enough help from the W.H.O. to modernize.

Chisholm still insisted on inspection and entered what he describes as “the best maternity ward I have ever seen in any country – far better than I have seen in North America.” The ward was large. “The footposts of each bed were extended up three feet or so and slung beneath the footposts was a cradle.” If the baby cried once, the mother would rock the cradle with her toes. If the rocking did not immediately put the infant to sleep again, the mother would reach and take the baby into her arms, where Chisholm commented “a baby is supposed to be most of the time.”

The empathic point that Dr. Chisholm was making was that this ward was superior because it did the most for the child’s welfare. He further commented that the babies were healthier and less neurotic than some in settings of more advanced scientific equipment and modern furnishings. (see article, “Tomorrow’s Children,” Brock Chisholm, RECONSTRUCTION IN RELIGION, Alfred Kuenzli, Beacon Press, 1961).

Just as our patterns of hospital care should not be finally fixed on the efficiency of glass, incubators or isolated cribrooms, because the needs of the child may precipitate revisions, so the primacy of people generally requires democratic principles in the functioning of changed ways of serving human need. Where there is faithfulness to the principles suggested, I believe that there will be a surprising absence of violent contradictions between private judgment and group decision.

Of course we are wagering our existence that these methods of working together will bring out the best of our judgments and restrain the worst of our errors. But we are human; the only ways we each know our God, or highest value, are through human experience and interpretation. Our Judeo-Christian heritage again and again is a witness to the strength of people when they gather in brotherly love to sustain human values. Whatever strengths we can contribute to the human religious enterprise, may be summarized as faith in the creative relationship between the sanctity of private judgment and the sacredness of the brotherly community.