The Unsponsored Mind And The Greatest Duty

March 7, 1982
Lakeland

The Unitarian Universalist faith is not only free, but also must be accountable. We may take a certain pride in being creedless as long as we are not faithless. A responsible faith will seek to build fidelity to principles which are good in their means and worthy in ends. Such an answerable religion will weld strong bonds of fellowship and accomplish tasks unitedly if there is approval of the free mind and acceptance of the self-disciplines of understanding and social commitment. Perhaps these considerations of our religion will be sharpened if we look at 1) the unsponsored mind with unlimited reach and 2) the greatest duty.

The “unsponsored mind” is a phrase coined by versatile Steve Allen, a thoughtful, courageous man as well as a talented writer and performer. When he was on the air some years ago, Mr. Allen protested that sponsors were attempting to limit his freedom to express personal opinions. When Mr. Allen signed a petition urging clemency for a prisoner condemned to death, a sponsor became alarmed and exerted pressure to compel Mr. Allen not to become identified with any more “controversial” matters and problems. Amid this insistence not to rock any boats which might have a dampening effect on sales of the sponsor’s products, Mr. Allen protested that it is one thing to sponsor entertainment. It is quite another to expect that the sponsor can control the performer’s mind in the marketing manner in which commercials are produced.

The value of the unsponsored mind is not limited to the commercial, entertainment world. The free mind principle is the root of our religious faith. Everything in our heritage grows branches, blossoms, and grows fruit from that fundamental root.

The unsponsored mind is the most vital of intellectual responsibilities. The unsponsored mind is neither flippant cynicism which glibly rejects various matters, nor is it a gullible naivete which lightly floats higher or lower with every changing tide of public opinion.

In Bunyan’s timeless allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress, when Christian runs to seek eternal life, two neighbors seek to bring him back – one is “Obstinate,” the other “Pliable.” This is an allegory of the unsponsored mind, too.

As Milton wrote, “truth is a running stream, not a locked-in pool.” When we fail to reconstruct the truth on the occasion of new discoveries of the mind or fresh combinations of accruing human experience,s, then we are captured by old Obstinate.

The comparable hazard is that we shall confuse an open mind with a vacant one. Then, as in Bunyan’s allegory, Pliable is robbing us of conviction. Disaster is created by gullible mentalities as well as obstinate ones. The irrationality of the mob, the shallow minds which flutter with the breeze of every doctrine, no matter how palpably false, deters progress and inhibits ethical candor. To the pliable, we say, with Emerson, “nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

Leo Tolstoy once wrote, “the one thing necessary in life, as in art, is to tell the truth.” The responsible Unitarian Universalist balances his/her right to freedom with the self-imposed obligations of study, thought, judgment, and courageous expressions. This is the unsponsored mind.

Furthermore, in our small world, Unitarian Universalists have an obligation to stand for an unlimited reach of understanding, acceptance, and tolerance. No one religion has all the truth; there is considerable acreage of common ground among the world’s religions.

Nothing seems more clear than that any dogmatic creed becomes out-moded. Ancient truth becomes modern error as the treasure of human knowledge and wisdom accumulates. The Spring of the year marks holy days of both Jewish and Christian religions. [CJW note: Passover, Easter] This annual coincidence should remind us that a common religious heritage develops differing expressions, and one is not more honorable than the other. There is a legend from old Rabbinic sources which is pertinent:

There is a tale in the Midrash about the ancient, wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah which has similarities to the Greek myth of the Procrustean bed. When a traveler arrived, he was placed in an iron bed in the public square. If the man was too short for the bed, his legs and body would be violently stretched until he matched the length of the bed. A tall man would have his legs amputated until he fitted the length of the bed. the rabbis labeled this sin in Sodom and Gomorrah as the sin of conformity. There, the wrong-headed citizens “insisted that everyone think as they did. There could be no differences of worship or belief or action. That is why these cities were doomed to destruction.”

Unitarian Universalists contend that there is no room in the world for spiritual or religious despotism. Our world must being to mature and concede that all religions grew out of human experience confronting and interpreting the amazing universe, the outer world of persons and events, cosmic mystery, and the inner world of fears, hopes, and the search for understanding. In different times and places, persons and cultures arrived at unlike interpretations of religion.

Max Muller, scholar of Asian religions, wrote, “the true religion of the future will be the fulfillment of all the religions of the past – the true religion of humanity; that which, in the struggle of history remains as the indestructible portion of all sectarian religions of mankind.” [CJW note – rich lore of Hindu ....]

Perhaps Muller was unrealistic [CJW note: a dreamer], but indubitably the world is increasingly interconnected. We feel the pain of more and more connections. E.g., if a revolutionary party forms in Central America, a military junta experiences fear and phones buzz in Washington, Moscow, Havana, Mexico City, and all the major capitals of the world. All feel involved. The uniting agonies of our planet have been felt in the United Nations since that organization was founded.

Religious differences remain sharp; the anguish of intolerance continues; orthodoxy prospers numerically and we Unitarian Universalists are weak in any statistical comparison. Nevertheless the universal reach of a free religion calls for our devotion.

Did you see the Carl Sandburg program Tuesday night? I recalled those lines from The People, Yes:

“We’ll see what we’ll see.
Time is a great teacher
Today me and tomorrow – maybe you.
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
What is bitter to stand against today
May be sweet to remember tomorrow.”

In a time when economic, political, and religious issues boil and steam fueled by dangerous fires, the goals of a free faith may seem a fuzzy utopian goal indeed. In Richard Dana’s classic, TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST, the crew, nearing Boston harbor on the long voyage home, could not see the New England coast, but they knew they were close by the soundings. The lead and line were tossed overboard to measure fathoms. By the depth of the water and the particles adhering to the sounding lead – sand, mud, and shells, they knew when they were nearing Nantucket Island, Block Island, or the Georges Bank. The most obscure fog could not conceal their locations.

So with the unsponsored mind and the unlimited reach for understanding and unity. The harbor is not in sight. We are fogged in by national and international crises. Collisions are possible, even probable. But the depth of our conviction, of the universality of ethical religion and the faint signals of the arriving of one world, we may still cherish the hope that earth will be fair and all her people one. Do you remember Whitter’s lines from Barefoot Bay:

“Still as my horizon grew
Larger grew my riches too
All the world I saw or knew....”

One thing more – the responsibilities of the unsponsored mind and the reach of a free faith do not end there. Without the greatest duty, our religion, or any other one is trivially self-centered. The “greatest duty” is a phrase used by the late Martin Buber. Some years ago, Buber was awarded the Peace Prize by the German book trade. Before a German audience, he spoke of the millions of his fellow Jews who had been victims of the Holocaust, “the organized cruelty of which cannot be compared with any earlier historical period.” Buber said he would not and could not forget this genocidal atrocity. How then could he accept a prize from those responsible? He said, “the greatest duty of man has always been to fashion one humanity out of this hostility of separate groups, not matter how impossible seemed the task.” (GOD AND FREUD, Leonard Gross, 1959).

Because we affirm the worth of every human being, because we believe in the sisterhood/brotherhood of the human family, it is our greatest duty to advance, even by inches, the advent of one humanity.

Unitarian Universalists have always proposed an optimistic view of the human enterprise. But there is little room for naivete about the dimensions of the task. Did you see the movie “Tess” last year? It was based on Thos. Hardy’s masterpiece TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES. I have forgotten whether this scene was in the movie. In one of the early chapters, lovely young Tess and her little brother Abraham are taking beehives to market, because their erratic, drinking parents are indisposed. The night is dark and the two innocents experience both the fright caused by the lonely darkness and the wonder stirred by the star-blanketed night.

Little Abraham asks his sister if all the stars were worlds like ours. She says, “I don’t know, but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our tree. Most of them splendid and sound – a few blighted.”

“Which one do we live on – a splendid one or a blighted one?

Tess answers, “A blighted one.”

A few minutes later the horse on which the d'Urberville family depended is accidentally killed. Tess blames herself and mourns, “Why I danced and laughed only yesterday, to think I was such a fool.”

Abraham murmurs through his tears, “Its because we live on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn’t it Tess?”

The duties of religion will never be fulfilled as long as there are millions of persons who by reason of the agonies of their lives have come to believe they live on a blighted star.

Dumas Malone, Jefferson’s biographer, pointed out that Jefferson was a long-range optimist and had a high degree of general confidence in human nature, but that he was never disposed to leave human rights to chance or unfocused optimism. That was why he supported the Bill of Rights and freedom statutes in his own state. He had the same wariness about political rulers as Lord Acton. [CJW note: he stood firm for Constitutional guarantees ... [to not rely on] chance or whim or political generosity of whatever party]

When Dante is in Paradise (Canto XXIV) he is questioned why he believes his religion,

“The flood,” I answer’d, “from the Spirit of God
Rain’d down upon the ancient bond and new,
Here is the reasoning that convinceth me
So feelingly, each argument beside
Seems blunt and forceless in comparison.”
Then heard I: “Wherefore holdest thou that each,
The elder proposition and the new,
Which so persuade thee, are the voice of Heaven?”
“The works, that follow’d, evidence their truth, ...”

[CJW note: insert Jefferson quote]

The test that Dante proposed for the covenants in which he had deposited his faith – Old and New Testaments – were the works that followed from the belief.

We are not exceptions. Our obligations do not terminate with the unsponsored mind or the reach of an unlimited religion. We are not exempt from the test of religion – to fashion one humanity out of separate, hostile groups no matter how numerous the tasks, how controversial the issues, or how rough and unpromising the road.

Addendum:

Betty Mills is an author/former member of the Board of Trustees of the UUA and a member of a Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in North Dakota.

Although we do not use borrowed chairs, much of what she wrote about a Unitarian Universalist Fellowship applies to us:

“A Fellowship is an island of liberalism in a sea of orthodoxy; it is a group of people sitting on borrowed chairs in preference to padded pews. It is a state of religious satisfaction amidst financial despair. A Fellowship consists of people with horrified relatives and precocious children, and develops tremendous esprit-de-corps by arguing violently among themselves. A Fellowship has sourdough pancakes for Easter breakfast, jazz for the processional, and Mark Twain for the benediction. It cries loudly to Boston for help, and then tells its emissaries how to run the denomination. It borrows furniture from its members, hymns from the orthodox, and ideas from everyone. It is composed of 3 parts exhilaration and two parts exasperation, and glues everything together with coffee. It is at once a risky adventure and a great adventure, and without it I would be a lost soul.”