Double Vision

October 1969
Croton (on-Hudson?)
Westfield

Double Vision

It is in the framework of the power and responsibility of man that I speak of double vision. Double vision is a handicap when driving an automobile or hitting a baseball. But double vision is the required perception in the structure of an adequate religion. I get about a good deal among the Unitarian Universalist Metro church/fellowship. I am aware that among many who profess our religious ideas and who give allegiance to a Unitarian Universalist society there is some ambiguity about what our religious movement is doing and saying. There is hunger for personal convictions deep enough to contain the storms of contradiction that arise so readily when we get talking candidly with another Unitarian Universalist who may violently disagree with the conviction that the church/fellowship as a gathered group should stand for justice in the community. I am not speaking about generalized principles of justice or peace – these are not difficult. But when an issue before a religious body which levels specific criticism, even condemnation, at social peers, or business associates or professional stance – what then? There are those among us who believe it much better and safer for other groups (NAA War Resis. Lg; CC C Co Clergy and Laymen come for V.N.) to be known for forthright positions and act specifically on issues. There are many persons whose sincerity cannot be doubted who believe that the social limits of an adequate religion are to teach the individual with the pure principles of religious law and prophecy, to comfort him with the beauty of worship, to remind him of reverent psalms or sermons sanctified by age, of human experience, to advise him with the time-tried wisdom of Biblical sages and Unitarian Universalist heroes. Thus to build a philosophical base and ethical fire, hoping that in our time he will go and do likewise in the community as an individual.

But the issue becomes bristly because many among us also believe that Unitarian Universalist inspiration and action cannot always be contained in an aggregation of separate vessels but must be blended frequently in one container – the church/fellowship. They believe merged convictions can create a chemistry of greater force, point direction, and achieve results of greater power when wrong is labeled “wrong” by the majority and consequently create the setting to bring about more specific justice in the social order.

I am attempting to put before you my belief in the Double Vision of religion. What religion should be to the individual as an inner experience opening a comprehensive vision encompassing one’s relationship to the wonder and mystery of the universe, relationship to the fears, angers, joys, and hopes one feels within himself and about himself, and a balance of self and selflessness that will lead to healthy relationships to other persons. Worship in its many forms – group services, art, music, drama, philosophy, meditation, self-searching, prayer – all can be productive contributors to the process of becoming a person with a total reverence for life – one’s own life, the life of others, and for the mysterious and powerful life force that seems an unquenchable characteristic of the universe which is our home. A religion that fails to provide the setting for an ever richer inner life is separated from the feelings that make us human.

But may I suggest to you that another vision can be perceived – not only what religion can be as my own individual inner experience but also what the organized religious group can be together and can do together. What is the religious fellowship; what ought it do?

You will remember, I hope, that in speaking from this pace, I am not a voice of any official directive or policy. The Unitarian Universalist groups are independent, forming their own policies, directing their own programs. As a staff person on the Met Dis I have neither the right nor intention to tell you what you should do. But as a convinced Unitarian Universalist I have the obligation imposed by my own beliefs to speak on this subject.

Both are necessary – the inner vision of what a religion of one’s own must be, and an outer vision of what we can do together to bring nearer a world of peace and order, where all infringements on human freedom, all insults to human dignity, and all disinheritance from human equality will become increasingly intolerable.

It is the outer vision that stirs some difficulties among us. We find little objection to the free pulpit today. But when a group wants to act on issues that may ruffle feelings in the community or take actions that may directly or indirectly touch feelings of hostility, or when we open our doors to give symbolic sanctuary to a war resister or provide a forum for dissidents and radicals, or deal corporately with the facts of open housing or equal opportunity employment, then it is that protests may increase and sometimes pledges decrease.

One historian (Bertram Wolfe) summed up the great classic Greek civilization as including a sense of limits and moderation and a rejection of excess. But the experience of many of the rejected and disinherited in our world today seems to indicate that if you want to make an impact on stopping war, or achieving racial justice and equal power, and gentleness and moderation fail, perhaps old limits must be transgressed, moderation become immoderate, and excess tried, not rejected out of hand. I am not an advocate of violence; I am appalled by brutality – whether mob brutality or police brutality. Yet the question remains – what must the oppressed and disinherited do to create the conditions where the powerful favored and affluent will hear their cries and know their conditions?

What can the religious society do to shape, form, and bring progress to the outer vision of a world ever more free and fair? I have been giving some thought lately and intend to learn a lot more about that which goes by the unpoetic description, General Systems Theory. Oversimplified, it is a recognition of the relationships of systems. The business system is related to government and labor; education is related to public and private research, as well as taxation; public transport is related to private automobiles. Organized religion is a system relating to them all. Almost anything considered a system is always part of a larger system. The relationships can be creative and effective if we apply certain ways of measuring. For your consideration today, I would speak of relevance, communication, and values, because these are essential components in the achieving of proper double vision in religion.

Relevance: this is an overworked word. The frequent criticism of the churches is that they are not relevant. The Gallup Poll discovered in 1957 that 69% of those surveyed believed that religion as a whole was increasing its influence on American life; 14% believed religion was losing its influence. In May, 1969, 14% believed that the influence was increasing, and 70% believed that religion was losing influence on American life. George Gallup said this was one of the most dramatic reversals in opinion in the history of polling. Most people seem to believe now that the church is losing influence – not relevant.

I read that relevancy is “the situation in which the behavior of the environment affects the system and the behavior of the system affects the environment.” Bringing that to my discussion today, religious relevancy is the recognition that social and political conditions that surround us near and far affect the church/fellowship. To be relevant the church/fellowship must affect the environment. I do not see how it is possible for us to be relevant unless we influence the environment. Surely there is no question that the environment affects us. Let me just make one reference: we are part of the NY metropolitan region. NYC is the center to which vast numbers of commuters are related directly, and all others indirectly. NYC faces a housing deficit and sub-standard housing situation of staggering proportions, with the future bleak because of rising population. 99% of the vacant land available for housing is outside NYC. Complicating the entire human situation is the growing apartheid of the whole region – a forced separation of Blacks and Puerto Ricans from the rest of the region’s population. Only 8% of the heads of households in the 30-34 age group could buy a house in Westchester, only 17% in Rockland, Putnam, and Orange counties. This ominous housing deficiency and separation affects the social stability of the whole region. Can the religious society affect this environment [and] be relevant? It can, if there is the will to do so.

The same relevant impact could be felt on other issues – pollution, education, employment, police attitudes. Many believe that our religious climate favors only [those] individuals [who] exert individual leverage. But if members by our democratic process believe that group stands [and] group efforts can exert more effective leverage, why should they hold back? Again and again, legislators have told me that official positions taken by a religious group are taken seriously because they feel that pro and con debate has taken place and the issue considered.

Communication: Another requisite component is communication. I mean more than the daily batch of mimeographed announcements, although nothing I have experienced leads me to discount the power of the printed word, in spite of frequently being snowed in by paper blizzards. When a religious society feels tension, discovers serious disagreements, this is communication just as the sensation of physical pain is a communication to the brain. When an issue, whether external or internal, is placed before a church/fellowship body the response is a communication. If there is lack of response, inertia, this is communication, too. When there is a heated, aroused response, this is communication. Expressed feelings are a communication. When persons of different faiths and varying attitudes turn out in large numbers for a controversial program, this is communication of the common hopes and fears that transcend usual internal programs or parochial concerns.

When we are at our best in religious affairs, we try to interpret, understand, and clarify such communications. When persons communicate, that is, hear and respond to ideas and actions, we can recognize that they too are seeking relevancy – they may believe, they may only hope that the larger environment can be helpfully influenced by the smaller unites within it – the Unitarian Universalist church/fellowship is a particular example.

This is not to say that we must respond with a knee jerk reflex to every hammer that bangs from all directions in our multi-problem culture. We must accept the reality that we are all limited, not only by time and energy, but also by our interests.

This brings me to the third component, values. I have not found better words than some of those contained in the corporate purpose of the Unitarian Universalist:

A free and disciplined search for truth.
To affirm, defend, and promote the supreme worth of every human personality, the dignity of man, and the use of the democratic method in human relationships.
To implement our vision of one world by striving for a world community founded on ideals of brotherhood, justice, and peace.

These are values which inevitably develop in each of us when we seek to develop the inner vision of deepening personal religion. But in the harried and hectic affairs of the human venture, they are generalities. The evils of our time are damnably specific. Generalized affirmations of good are simply not enough. They must be applied with relevance and with the character of communication which leads to the quality of actions which come in like the tide – irresistible and on the level.

Appendix A

In Greek mythology, Prometheus (whose name also signified “forethought”) was the great benefactor of men because he stole fire from the gods, bringing fire, warmth, and light to the family of man. Thus was the family of man able to be more than a match for all other animals. Man could then fashion tools and weapons, build housing, illuminate the darkness, and develop agriculture. Prometheus, some myths have it, taught man all the useful arts. For such presumption, Zeus chained Prometheus on a mountain top. There, Prometheus was chained to a rock and suffered the agony of his liver being eaten each day by an eagle, the liver being restored each morning so that there could be another day of suffering.

Byron:

“Thy godlike crime was to be kind
To render with they precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen man with his own mind.”

In the course of a talk a year or so ago, I interjected a remark rather spontaneously, “If God is dead, who are the executors of the estate?” Whether the gods resented Prometheus’ brash courage helping the human family, or whether God is dead, may not be a relevant point.

The death of God debate has subsided even among the Christian theologians. Among Unitarian Universalists the debate never reached an excited point because our days of God/no-God, [or] the Humanist/Theist controversy had reached a high point and diminished in importance a generation ago. most of us were aware that the essential question was not whether or not God was dead or whether or not he ever existed (or now exists); rather, [it is] how we should live and behave in the light of serious belief about the nature and responsibilities of man in the gigantic, creating Universe.

But when I pose the rhetorical question, “If God is dead, who are the executors of the estate”, I meant of course that we are. That is, we have acquired control over forest, animal, fish of the sea, and birds of the air. It is one thing to take power – be a God – [but] quite another to be a responsible steward of the resources we command. In my view, never before has it been so essential that man bears the burden of being a God – and recognize and accept the awful responsibility of many decisions, where wrong ones may mean the destruction of our little space-ship Earth, degrading living space to dead void.