The Cost and Value of Free Religions

1980 (Probably December)
Lakeland (Probably)

When someone attempts to compare the cost and value of free religion, one is also attempting to contrast the tangible with the intangible – a difficult if not impossible task. You know from your checkbook or wallet what it costs you to be a member of friend of this Fellowship. There is much more difficulty in assessing the value you receive. The Fund Drive Committee (Nelson Burgess) has asked Committees and officers to provide a dollar figure for various portions of the 1981 budget to the end that everyone will know the dollar cost of this Unitarian Universalist Fellowship for 1981. Every member has the opportunity to state his/her priorities today. In the Annual Meeting in January, members will adopt a budget based on what members have stated as their intention to contribute (which is what a pledge is).

A cartoon in a church magazine depicted two glum-looking clergymen, probably the senior and associate minister, gazing at a rather sparse sum of money. One says to the other, “Inflation seems to have hit everything but the collection plate.”

What is of value to you in this Fellowship? A few years ago when I was in the New York City area, there was a news story about a saloon which had to move because the building in which it was located was taken for some urban renewal project. There was argument between city and federal authorities as to whether or not the historic tavern was a “social institution worth saving.” Then after a period, the decision was made, the saloon was valued as a social institution and would be permitted to rent space in the new project when the building was completed. Meanwhile, temporary quarters across the street would be rented. The happy, regular customers helped move bar stools and tables across the street. One of them was quoted in a most interesting comment, “If it wasn’t for this place, God knows, I’d have to go to church to find any of the boys.”

What do you value in this fellowship? An out-distanced runner-up to a convivial pub, or some other place you enjoy or cause you support? Only you can answer that. There is no startlingly imaginative proposition I, or anyone else can make, that will answer that for each of you, individually. Mark Twain once wrote that “Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before him.” But the point is, it is not what I say, but what you value.

The members and friends of the fellowship provide the only substantial flow of funds. The Fellowship is the assembly of persons, members, and friends, held together by a common rule. We gather to share convictions, to attempt mutual persuasion, to set direction for actions. We see a fellow Unitarian Universalist not only as another person whose beliefs are not limited by an imposed creed, but also see him/her as a person whose convictions represent interdependency as well as independence. The Fellowship knows itself not only in the lateral profiles and the back-of-the-neck views of our chairs arranged in rows. More vitally, we know each other in face-to-face mutual involvement.

We are a community. Community is a necessity, not an option. “To be is to be with.” (Gabriel Marcel). Community is not a contrived social invention of some ancient Neanderthal, Egyptian, or Mayan culture but the universal necessary condition required to be human. The distinguishing human mark is personhood. Essential to human living is a self-image. This image of self emerges in community – family life, religious group, school, occupation, civic life. The person, the “I” develops by the variety of relationships that are encountered from birth onward.

Paul Tillich understood this when he wrote (SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, Vol. 3, pp. 40/41), “Personal life emerges in the encounter of person with person and in no other way. If one can imagine a living being with the (human) psychosomatic structure complete outside any human community, such a being count not actualize its spirit .... Therefore the self-integration of the person occurs in a community within which the continuous mutual encounter of centered self with centered self is possible and actual.”

The persons in our Fellowship who consider, decide, commit, and act represent no permanent line of portraits in an unchanging gallery. Thornton Wilder’s play, OUR TOWN, superbly presented the temporary nature of individual lives and the permanence of the human family. Wilder captured the glory and pathos in the lives of average persons in Grover’s Corners, not much different from you and me.

The persons in our Unitarian Universalist Fellowships and churches are like the people in OUR TOWN. A child is born; with gladness he/she is welcomed and the group counts one more. Man and woman choose to walk together henceforth and we are glad for their union. A man or woman dies in bed, or far from home. We count one less and know the tug of sorrow. Our minds are anxious with unanswerable questions when tragedy strikes; our roster is lessened by an aching omission. A family moves – we are glad when theirs is a more rewarding assignment, but sorry that a needed family has gone beyond the immediate circle of our Fellowship life. A new family or individual arrives. We are glad because we need talent, interest, influence, support. We need the bracing, yeasty ferment of new ideas and fresh strength. We need the added happiness created by new friends.

The persons in our Fellowship are a moving, changing pageant, never the same today as yesterday, and no tomorrow will be just like today. We journey together on the road to an unknown future. Sooner or later, every one of us will drop out along the line of the human march. But if we have walked together with good-will, understanding, and mutual help, we will have been stronger individually and a happier company in our journey together.

But to keep that quality, we must keep organization and support effective. In the fine series of books, RIVERS OF AMERICA, Henry Beston described the geography and culture of the areas bordering the great St. Lawrence River. Beston wrote of a unique quality of life in rural, devout French Canada, “like an old room warmed by an open fire, the little society was warmed by that sense of human oneness and ultimate equality which the religious temper alone can give.”

Our treasurer, Dolly, told the Board two weeks ago that we are behind about $600 this year, comparing receipts with expenditures. We started the year with a possible shortfall of almost $2300 comparing voted expenditures with pledges. Some might say we’ve had a poor year, financially. But I like to think of the remark made by the late, famous show-man Mike Todd, who said once, “I’ve never been poor, only broke. Being poor is a frame of mind, being broke is only a temporary condition.”

An Annual Fund Drive is planned because business-like procedures are required. Now there are always those who feel some sensitivity when money matters explicitly intrude on their life in the Fellowship. But there is nothing awry or gauche in an orderly, informed campaign to raise money for the Fellowship. I still remember a scene from a musical I saw on Broadway some twelve years ago or so, ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER. One of the more amusing characters is a Greek multi-millionaire shipping magnate, who in the unfolding of the plot, visits the clinic operated by the hero and his brother, both psychologists. The millionaire keeps referring to “who runs the business here?” The psychologist, sensitive to his professional qualifications, keeps assuring the rich man, “this is not a business, this is a psychological clinic.” The shipping magnate stares and asks, “You take in money?” “Yes.” “Well, it’s a business.”

In a similar frame of reference, this Fellowship is a business, too. Money is taken in because when a button is switched, you expect the bulb to light. You expect to be warm or cool depending on the weather, to be untouched by falling plaster or rain from a leaky roof. That’s what rent is for. You decided to have me visit you on a twice-monthly basis because I have been trained for the profession of ministry. That costs money – the largest item in your budget, principally because of the distance I travel. The government requires postage on mail. Paper costs money. The Fellowship supports our Unitarian Universalist Association, our Florida District, our cluster.

For this and more, your commitment of money is asked. It’s a business. Don’t give until it hurts. Within your means, give until it feels good.

But remember that in this “business,” you, the members, are the management. In the Annual Meeting, members make the binding choices for the allocation of money from the pledges members have made. You make the choice.

A few days ago (Christian Ministry, Nov. 1980), I noticed this comment in a quote from the author of the study of the Duke of Wellington. “I had an advantage over earlier biographers. I found an old account book in which I discovered how the great man spent his money. It was a better clue than reading letters or speeches as to what the Duke really thought was important in life.” That may not be a complete observation or appraisal, but it is true in part.

Because we believe that the person is more than a molecular sequence or a bio-chemical conglomeration, we covenant together to maintain the value of the person, to seek the ways individually and together, to support the issues which will create increasing recognition of the surpassing need to labor for freedom, fellowship, and human dignity. This is our purpose as a Fellowship. We differ among us as to how we shall worship together, how we shall describe God or whether we shall even attach any meaning to the idea of God. We interpret the experience of religion variously. We seek to deepen our faith by openness to the convictions of others, whose witness for religion may be based on differing intensities of experience and unlike interpretations.

Yes, raising money is a business – when there is good response to the efforts the Fund Drive committee is making, we will find that [we] have enhanced the depth, joy, fun, and good feeling together:

The joy of an old story or new child
The vibrating sensitivity of human empathy when we embrace the grief-stricken or the joyful
The zest of fine conversations
The delight of a shared meal
The remembrance of things past
The hope of new and good experiences to come
The celebration of the great high-tide events of the human family

This I believe is our total worship – our worthship. Quote (somewhere) “It is not the wind which is lacking, but the hoisting of our sails.”

(Clipped from Georgia Universalist)[:]

While it is true that my experiences mean the most to me,
It is also true that you cannot know me unless I share my experiences,
And I need to know you buy your sharing.
Together we may find a direction valuable to us both.
Together we may find the courage to understand to accept our differences,
Together we may discover the reason to be a community.