Religion is...

April 30, 1967
Plainfield

Religion is...

Religion is what? As those news items described it in Kankakee, San Francisco, Gainesville? This sermon is the first in a series, not necessarily consecutive, intended to be my response to the "Report of the Committee on Goals of the Unitarian Universalist Association." Although to begin the series by dealing with definitions may seem elementary to some of you, my view is that to deal with superstructures and future alterations without inspecting foundations is not only poor architecture but also poor churchmanship.

Would you define religion as "the feeling of absolute dependence on the divine?" I would not, although that was a popular definition coined by Schliermacher, a famous 19th century German theologian.

Would you define religion as "a belief in an everlasting God, that is divine mind and will, ruling the Universe and holding moral relations with man?" That was the affirmation of James Martineau, 19th Century English Unitarian minister and philosopher, but his definition would not be accepted by a majority of 20th century Unitarians who find Martineau’s definition no longer sufficient or precise.

There are many who would respond still to Matthew Arnold who wrote that "religion is morality touched with emotion," but there are more who would assert that such a definition omits much.

Definitions of religion are almost as countless as autos on an expressway. For this reason, the Committee on Goals considered findings in the framework of the definition of religion proposed by the Study Commissions of a few years ago (p. 23 THE FREE CHURCH AND THE CHANGING WORLD), "we are taking religion to be the way in which men in community personally relate to express or symbolize that which gives meaning to their lives and which is ultimately most significant for sustaining their being."

This is an excellent working definition for coming to grips with the question of what religion is, but the definition is vague enough so that persons could commit the error of glossing over real differences. I find myself somewhat confused by the phrase, "the way in which men in community personally relate." Does this propose that men bring their personal convictions to be shared with others so that the community may whittle out a minimum consensus – pare off differences to find the core beliefs which are common to all? In such a search for commonality is there likely to be discovered only banality?

From the newsletter of another Unitarian Church, I clipped the following Bertrand Russell anecdote. Russell went to jail for his pacifism during the First World War. When asked to fill in his religious denomination he wrote, "agnostic." The warden looked at the information and remarked, "I don't know what religion that is, but it doesn't matter since we all worship the same God." Russell later added in his memoirs, "that remark kept me happy for a week."

In our search for significant reasons to be together in a religious society, we should recognize our diversities frankly, for authentic unity must be more than a strained affability which conceals important differences. More than one of us, perhaps everyone of us, often enough makes the error of putting higher value on congeniality than candor in the mistaken belief that politeness requires evasiveness. One can be forthright and polite.

This may be a cultural fault of our times. Jules Pfeiffer, the provocative cartoonist, wrote a play which opened earlier this week and closed last night. In what may have been a prediction of what would happen to the play, Pfeiffer said he would try to get away from the monotonous expectations which seem to create a successful play. He wrote (NYT Drama Section, 4/23/67),

“Axiomatic in the Theatre of Counter-revolt is that you can say anything you want to say, if, by the end of the evening, you've made clear that you haven't really said it. Rebels must learn that issues aren't as simple as they think. Blacks and Whites must learn that, beneath their masks of hate, lies brotherly love. Parents must learn to be patient with nonconformist children for they are certain to sell out. Erring husbands must learn that extra-marital affairs can never become meaningful relationships. Pregnant teenagers must learn that sex is always for grownups and in any case a mistake. Wives must learn that deep down men are just little boys and women wouldn’t want them any other way. And audiences must learn that it is not enough to allow themselves to be asked questions; they must be given false answers."

Perhaps Pfeiffer exaggerated the devious roles that playwrights and playgoers impose on each other; perhaps he overdoes the critique of current modes and manners. But as we consider over the months the issues that are identified in the Goals Report, I hope we will not make the error of glossing over what are real diversities or assuming that the only possible unities must be contained in vague ambiguities.

This is a formidable assignment, for a person's religion is much more than the intellectual content of propositions he believes. This diversity was well stated by Grensted in his PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION (p. 8). Before attempting to explain the way I think definitions of religion must be understood, let me read his analysis. You may find yourself fitting into one rather than another of his categories:

“...what religion means... For one it would mean a few conventional practices, with going to church and, possibly, saying one’s prayers, as the most general. For another it would mean a life of active and unselfish well-doing. In both these cases religion would be defined in terms of action. But when we turn to another of our friends, we should find, if we could persuade him to speak, that though these active aspects of religion are not denied, they are for him only superficial. Religion has the character of a deep inner sense of communion, carrying with it implications of guidance and security, and giving meaning to the whole of life. All this, to yet another friend, would be incomplete and unsatisfying because it leaves out of account the necessity for a reasonable faith, shaped into a known and accepted creed or system of beliefs, and resting upon a recognized authority, a tradition, a scripture or a Church.

“It will be noted that these correspond neatly with one of the simplest analyses of human nature, that which breaks it up into the trinity of action, feeling and knowledge.”

Action without feeling and knowledge, or feeling without action and knowledge, or knowledge without action and feeling are all impoverished views of what religion is, even though we may be deficient frequently in our feeling or our actions or our knowledge.

To me religion represents a search for meaning, a grasp of perspective and a sense of direction. It is in the dimensions of meaning, perspective, and direction that I shall respond to the numerous assertions found in the statistics and recommendations of the Committee on Goals.

I. One of the needs of every person is to find meaning in human events. Many persons find life baffling, frustrating, cruel, as well as revealing, gratifying and humane. Although our days are helter-skelter and most evenings busy, busy, we should stop now and again between the ring-a-ding of the telephone and the rush to the committee meeting in order to ask ourselves, What's it all about? Why do I believe this is important? What is the true pattern of living into which my strivings can and should be woven harmoniously?

For good or ill, persons who seek out Unitarian Universalist churches and fellowships no longer accept the ancient and accepted theological "Why" about life. The explanation based on the "Fall of Man" and atonement salvation by crucifixion and resurrection presents far more difficulties than it solves. We accept the ancient myths as symbolic poetry, if at all, which is a far cry from embracing the doctrines to explain the "why" of life, death, and the consciousness of the stream of human experience within our knowledge [of] the span of life's beginnings and endings.

Coleridge once translated some lines from Schiller,

"The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The Power, the Beauty and the Majesty,
That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and wat'ry depths; all these have vanished.
They live no longer in the faith of reason!
But still the heart doth need a language, still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old name."

We too have such nostalgia at times, but the old and comfortable religious certainties of other ages no longer have validity in a religion of reason except by unreasonable re-interpretation. In a world where the margin of safety grows narrower day by day from extinction in a war that will destroy most people, we need to find meaning in human events today. In a world where unbounded population expansion will soon reach an intolerable level, we need to come to convictions about the meaning of life, why it is valuable, and how to maintain that value. In a world where the old answers irrelevant to the most crucial questions, we need to reflect upon and assign meaning to the origin, maintenance and destiny of human life.

One becomes dated when quoting 19th century Romantics, but I'm one with Robert Browning who said,

"life has meaning,
To find its meaning is my meat and drink."

What is religion – it is the search for meaning.

II. What is religion – it is a grasp of perspective, A sentence in Alfred North Whitehead’s RELIGION IN THE MAKING may stimulate you as it did me: "Progress in truth – truth of science and truth of religion – is mainly a progress in the framing of concepts, in discarding artificial abstractions or partial metaphors, and in evolving notions which strike more deeply into the root of reality." (p. 127)

In discarding concepts, myths, or metaphors which are no longer true or adequate, there must be recognition of perspective. In what kind of total experience are we thinking, feeling, acting? The universe is no longer a three-story structure with heaven above, hell below and earth the midway transfer station where one receives his one-way ticket for up or down. If one talks of origins and destiny, one must be aware of the tentative present conclusions about the complexities of time/space, biology, and geology. One can surmise that we have but scratched the surface and that many other complex scientific disciplines and discoveries will alter or enlarge the perspectives from which we dare assert what religion is and what one's religion should stir him to do.

Just one illustration. Dr. Barry Commoner, eminent biologist in his book, SCIENCE AND SURVIVAL (p.10-11), "Between 1860 and 1960, the combustion of fuels added nearly 14% to the carbon-dioxide content of the air which had until then remained constant for many centuries ... the temperature of the earth is sure to rise as the amount of carbon dioxide in the air increases By the year 2000, the extra heat due to fuel produced carbon dioxide might be sufficient to melt the Antarctic Ice Cap – 4000 years or 400 years (estimates vary). The consequent rise in sea level would be be catastrophe for much of the world's Inhabited land and many of its major cities."

Superknowledge may be more dangerous than superstition unless a more compelling ethic begins to prevail about the use of the world we live in. Stanton Coblentz once wrote (Christian Century, 7/20/66)

"Science, whose trained magician hands dispel
Mysteries noted once in awe and dread,
With rays and atoms weaves a deeper spell
And gives more fearsome mysteries instead."

I, for one, do not find it easy to understand many of the complexities of science, but I do know that one's religion should allow for the ever-changing nature of scientific perspectives. Furthermore, unless one's ethics deals with the consequences of the use of air, water, soil, fossil oils and the organic and plant life of the earth, one's religion will be trivial and antiquarian.

That is just one of the perspectives – for we must also deal with the new perspectives created by increasing awareness of our inner self and how that inner self influences what we see, hear, and understand. Jung suggested the importance of this perspective when he wrote, "In my picture of the world there is a vast outer realm and an equally vast inner realm; between these two stands man, facing now one and now the other, and according to his mood or desperation, taking the one for the absolute truth and sacrificing the other." (quoted by Shorer, BLAKE THE POLITICS OF VISION, p. 39)

What is religion – it is an effort to comprehend perspectives.

III. Religion is a sense of direction. In addition to finding meaning and allowing for the perspectives of NOW in order to achieve that meaning, one must act in ways coherent with meaning and perspective. One might be acting out a religious meaning if he advocated methods to prohibit men from using battleaxes in war, but the sense of direction would be turned backward. But if one tried to add his strength to the effort to put an end to ways of waging nuclear, chemical or other terrible ways of modern war, he would be headed in the direction where issues today are real, are puzzling, are contentious, and where following the direction of one's religious beliefs can be costly, personally. Kierkegaard wrote, “Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.”

There are millions of persons outside the churches. There are probably innumerable reasons for their absence, but if one listens, then one of the principal objections consists of doubt that organized religion has much power to make ideals real. Alan Watts, in THE BOOK has a verse that can be an allegory about this age-old debate of the nature of religion:

"The man behind the microscope
Has this advice for you
Instead of asking what it is,
Just ask, 'what does it do?"'

In the process by which one becomes religious by one’s own definition, one forms certain standards or beliefs or principles. If these standards have any significance, one does something about it – one may pray, sing, meditate, study, listen. One is directed by his real beliefs to acquire certain attitudes and behave in certain ways with other people. (This should not be confused with one's professed beliefs, for frequently there is a wide difference). There are resources. The treasury of religious belief represents a store of wisdom and ways of excellence which must be constantly tested by action in new perspectives – that is, with recognition of the vast changes that are occurring in the modern world wherever you may look.

In our pursuit of correct interpretations and implications of the Committee on Goals, we will inevitably deal with religion in the forms I have suggested – meaning, perspective, direction, and many other ways of classification. As different persons we will respond with unlike intensities of action, knowledge, feeling. Some persons may be alarmed, other may be enthused at what Unitarian religious groups may be like in ten years. We will continue to seek to understand each other, hopefully with good will even when there is sharp disagreement.

But beyond theism, humanism, atheism, agnosticism, beyond the debate about the Church and social action – the group assertion vis-a-vis the individual; beyond hymns or no hymns; beyond these there is a basic question. Unless one has wrestled with this question; reached an answer for himself however tentative and then attempted to live faithfully to that answer, all talk and thought about religion is paltry and unreal. That question is, "Beginning in my home, on my street, in my Church, in my City, in my State, in my nation, in my world, what does it mean and what is required of me to be a decent human being?"