Religion With Reservations

February 3, 1980
Lakeland

Religion With Reservations

If you wish to travel by air, this is the season in Florida when one will not get far or fast unless one has reservations. Religion has aspects of the opposite. The more reservations one holds, the shorter distance one will travel. One may not get off the ground.

Members of this Fellowship have engaged in a small group process wherein each person was encouraged to share with others priorities, hopes, dreams. These were differences of choice and emphasis. Strong emphasis expressed for one area of the life of the Fellowship necessarily means reservations about other parts of the program. We all hold our religion with reservations. That is why following this part of the service, our fund drive committee will share with you the priorities which emerged from the small group meetings for your additional feed-back and comment.

Our Unitarian Universalist religious tradition and principles carry into practice religion with reservations. But I believe we express openly that which is characteristic of the major stream of modern society.

This feeling was reinforced by reading Peter Berger’s latest book, THE HERETICAL IMPERATIVE. Berger is a sociologist at Rutgers University who has written lucidly on Christian theology. He is a Christian. Yet the characteristics of modern society he describes mesh with what I have called religion with reservations.

You may recall that “heresy” is choice. In THE HERETICAL IMPERATIVE, Berger demonstrates rather convincingly that not only may we choose, but in modern society, one must choose; there is no other option.

He bases the heretical imperative on developments in modern society which did not prevail in former ages:

a proliferation of institutional choice
unreliable plausibility structures
built-in uncertainty

First of all, he observes that modern consciousness “entails a movement from fate to choice.” In prior ages humans lived in a world of fate. Society was maintained by clear-cut behavior – prescribed behavior. “What is, must be, and it could be no other.”

But as modern society developed with science, technology, division of labor, religious reformation movements, economic and political situations, there can be a plurality of choices. As Berger observes (p. 17), “Thus the institutional pluralization that marks modernity affects not only human action but human consciousness: modern man finds himself confronted not only by multiple options of possible courses of action, but also by multiple options of possible ways of thinking about the world.”

This leads in sequence to what Berger calls “unreliable plausibility structures” because modern civilization has weakened almost every belief and value held because of tradition and authority. This has the accompanying characteristic of built-in uncertainty about almost everything.

I wondered about the validity of this when I recalled that the fundamentalist churches are where people are flocking in far greater numbers than to other religious institutions.

I wondered about the truth of Berger’s analysis when I read the Time Magazine article about the “Electronic Church” in the current issue.

The latest available figures on six of the star TV performers (religious) – Jim Bakker 51 million, Pat Robertson 47 million, Jerry Falwell 46, Rex Humbard 25, Jimmy Swaggart 20, Robert Schuller, 16. These are annual revenues – have been increasing and probably will continue to increase. There are millions who testify they have received help, well-being, spiritual renewal. But the critics are numerous, too, not the least of these critics being the established churches.

But in spite of such imposing financial statistics and undoubted crowd appeal, I am curious if it is not a combination of nostalgic, show-business well done and stirring but irrelevant speaking, more than a return to an unchanging fundamentalist gospel. I looked up a survey done a few years ago (I doubt if there would be a substantive change):

Four-fifths of Americans questioned believed the Bible to be the revealed word of God, but only 35% could name the four gospels and 53% could not even name one. 80% believed Christ is God, but when asked to rate the 100 most significant events in history, the birth of Christ came in 14th, tied with the discovery of the X-ray and the flight of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, NC. “Probably the most significant was a poll in which Americans were asked first, whether they felt religion was ‘very important.’ A vast majority said it was. Then they were asked, ‘Would you say that your religious beliefs have any effect on your ideas on politics and business?’ 54% said ‘no.’”

One more illustration: Rudolf Bultmann, esteemed Christian scholar and theologian wrote (quoted by Berger, p. 105), “One cannot use electric light and radio, call upon modern medicine in case of illness, and at the same time believe in the world of spirit and miracles of the New Testament.” (Unreliable plausibility structures)

All persons, or most all, hold religion with reservations.

Yet I can’t leave it there because I believe neutrality in religion is dis-membering. One of Carl Sandburg’s Lincoln stories seems illustrative. Lincoln told about the pioneer wife who, seeing her husband wrestling with a bear, shouted “Go to it, husband. Go to it, bear.”

Her impartiality indicated unacceptable neutrality and heedless reservations.

We all have reservations but we gather to share them. Then we seek, assign priorities based on our most commonly shared goals and efforts. We are together in this Fellowship because we have all the potential to grow in wisdom, understanding in this religious community. I like what church historian Martin Marty wrote, “It’s extremely easy to be an individualized Christian (or Unitarian Universalist) where no one can judge you or put you to work. It’s very hard to be in a congregation where the message isn’t always designed to appeal just to you.”

The combined spirit and sharing of truth-seeking; the common effort to mutually enhance and sustain our courage in a fearsome world and the limited effort to keep, share, and ... our fellowship of freedom and human dignity can embrace both our agreements and reservations.