Religion And Politics

October 21, 1984
Lakeland

October 28, 1984
Port Charlotte

Opening and Welcome

As you have probably noted, the theme today is religion and politics. I am not going to ring changes on the old joke about the Bishop assigning a young minister to a first parish and instructing him: “There are two subjects you must not touch in the pulpit – politics and religion.” I have heard so many varieties of that old chestnut that it must touch something in the subconscious.

The theme today is religion and politics. I am not going to endorse or disendorse any particular candidate from the pulpit. Not because I am shy, but rather from principle. However, if a certain political party was on the Florida ballot, I would be tempted to disendorse because there are limits even to political weirdness – the Reverend Bob Richards of Texas, a one-time Olympic athlete, is the candidate for President of the so-called “Populist Party.” Two of the planks in his platform make one wonder. He would remove the right to vote from anyone who had been on welfare for a year. Second, he would solve the Middle East problem by moving the entire population of Israel to West, Texas where the Israeli know-how in making the desert fruitful would transform the arid and parched lands of that part of Texas.

I had the most delightful fantasies about the whole population of Israel in West Texas – sabras in cowboy hats, Shimon Peres a political power in Austin, tacos and lox, tortillas and cream cheese. As an Olympic athlete, Richards should have been a good sport and consulted the nation of Israel. One does not have to do much research to unearth the strange, the comedy, and the fantasy in politics.

But politics is serious, determining our near and long-range future. My only exhortation is: VOTE.

Sermon

Although for the last 35 years at least there have been numerous arguments about the separation of church and state, and many Supreme Court decisions, the 1984 presidential campaign has seemed to generate enough heat about religion and politics to produce steaming controversy. There seems to be more editorials, journalists, commentaries, and inflamed claims about this subject than for many years heretofore.

My purpose today is to make what I believe to be a prime distinction between, on the one hand, the wall of separation of church and state, and on the other hand, religion and politics. Although Robert Frost was not touching these subjects in particular, with a great poet’s artistry, he grasps universals in the particulars of two farmers repairing the walls that divided the property of each:

“Before I built a wall
I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out.”

The First Amendment to the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof....” Thomas Jefferson wrote the Danbury Baptist Association, “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”

Jefferson, in those succinct lines, walled out any form of state church or special favors for any particular church or churches and barred discrimination against any church.

I am one who believes that a strong wall is as necessary a bulwark between church and state as any other provisions in the bill of rights [ensure] other freedoms. I hope the Supreme Court in its decisions in the coming months and years will not dilute or adulterate that vital Constitutional basis and history.

Right now that Constitutional freedom is under attack by those (usually fundamentalist) gospel preachers, who are exhorting us to return to a “Christian America.”

The contention usually goes something like, “This is a Christian nation; religion is part of our American way of life; to take it out of public schools (e.g.) is to rob us of an essential part of our heritage; the effect of such decisions as rendered in the McCollum and Regents’ Prayer cases is to make our culture secular where it was always the intent of our Founding Fathers that this nation should be a religious nation.”

This contention seems to be very persuasive to many, but serious flaws are revealed when the case is examined more closely.

Any examination discloses that Christianity is not one religion, but many. There are religions of ecclesiastical authority and religions of individual intuition; there are religions of reason and religions of revelation; there are Christian religions pre-occupied with theology and Christian religions emphasizing liturgical traditions; there are Christian religions devoted to the sacraments and Christian religions where the preaching of “The Word of God” is central.

When one narrows down to Protestantism, then there are four main divisions, each with sub-groups: Lutheranism, Episcopalianism (or Anglicanism), Calvinism, and the free churches, of which there are at least 250 recognized denominations in our country today.

This “Christian Nation” contention also overlooks or ignores the historical fact that members of the Jewish religion have been citizens from the beginnings, and that there are now many thousands of Moslems, Buddhists, not to speak of native American Indian religions.

More accurately, we are [more] a nation of many religions than we are a religious nation. Furthermore, the atheist or agnostic has no limitations on his citizenship, but has the right not to have a particular church or synagogue or mosque associated with citizenship.

Jefferson and Madison were primary in the securing of religious freedom in the United States. Jefferson’s proposal to the Virginia [legislature] passed after seven years of opposition and consideration.

Madison was effective in two basic ways. In the Virginia Assembly of 1784-85, he presented his famous “Memorial and Remonstrance to the Religious Rights of Man.” This was an attack on a bill which would “establish a provision for teachers of the Christian religion.” Later on in the career of this great American, he was responsible for including the right of freedom of religion in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

It is important to observe that these founders of our nation and religious freedom would not have pleased those persons who today exhort us to adhere to our heritage as “Christian” or even monotheistic.

When Jefferson said “free,” he meant FREE, as attested by his “Notes on Virginia”: “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbors to say there are twenty gods or no God.” Jefferson asserted that to compel outward conformity to any religion would force neighbors to be hypocrites. (See CORNERSTONES OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN AMERICA, Joseph L. Blau, Beacon Press, p. 72 ff.)

Furthermore, appeals to churchly authority can be both confusing and mistaken. A cartoon in the Tampa Tribune (9/28) compresses this: a balding, overweight clergyman (looks like I do – beard, vest) is standing at the door of the church, saying to a parishioner leaving the church, “No, no, Madam, I said Jesus sat down and ate with publicans, not Republicans.”

Many (if not most) of our Founding Fathers were immediately inspired by the Rationalists of the Enlightenment, and by the humanitarian goals of the American and French revolutions. “My mind is my church,” said Thomas Paine. I see more influence from the Deists ... Franklin, Washington, the Adamses, Jefferson, Madison, Paine, than [from] the organized churches of the time.

One thing more about the wall of separation of church and state: not only does the First Amendment prevent a state church or favoritism toward one church, but also the tax exemption privilege protects religious institutions from government. The power to tax is the power to destroy. The government could effectively render any religious institution powerless through the use of the tax. One of the noted cases of the 1950s was that of the Unitarian Church, Los Angeles, which was threatened with the loss of tax exemption because it refused to sign a loyalty oath.

Because churches and their spokesmen (and spokeswomen) must in the nature of convictions take stands, sometimes severely critical of the government, ... the government must not have the power to squelch or retaliate through the tax system.

In the Zorach case of some years ago, Mr. Justice Jackson, in a dissent, said this (and the advice is wise):

“My evangelistic brethren confuse an objection to compulsion with an objection to religion. It is possible to hold a faith with enough confidence that what should be rendered to God does not need to be collected and decided by Caesar.”

Yes, I believe in the wall of separation of church and state – but there is no way to separate religion and politics, nor should there be.

“Political” in the unabridged dictionary is defined as “of or pertaining to the exercise of rights and privileges or the influence by which the individuals of a state seek to determine or control its public policy; having to do with the organization or action of individuals, parties, or interests that seek to control the appointment or action of those who manage the affairs of a state.”

We exercise our rights and privileges by applying our values – that which we hold dear. There are [a] great many variations on the idea of God that numerous religious and their advocates have advanced. The authority for religious belief can be holy book, dogmatic church, intuition, authoritative mythology, imagination, reason. But every worthwhile religion that I know of stands for ethical behavior. The Golden Rule, in various forms, is basic to all the world’s great religions. You value your neighbor – what he/she is. In the Christian tradition, Jesus put it, “How can a man love God whom he has not seen, if he does not love his brother whom he has seen?” An old Jewish saying is, “one man is no man.” Martin Buber, the Israeli philosopher and teacher, said, “the most direct line to God is a circle around everyone.” Those who are reluctant to identify Deity in any of the proposed forms may take as a basic premise that human life is the highest value, and that the worth and dignity of all persons is a goal for which to labor in the social order.

Thus in the political segment of our lives, we are informed and directed by the values we hold. The values we hold direct the manner and decisions of the way we exercise our rights and privileges. The opening paragraph of a declaration by the Claggett Conference on Biblical Faith and Public Policy eloquently states the case: “our nation is on the threshold of an historic dialogue concerning the role of religious faith in our political life. We agree with those who assert that religious faith should not be separated from the moral and political life of our society. However, the wall of separation between church and state prevents any one church from imposing upon the whole society its views on matters of individual conscience. But this guarantee is not intended to insulate our political life from the direct influence of moral values and religious vision which promotes the general welfare.” (see Christian Century, 9/14/84)

But values differ. Interpretations of the correct direction of the nation obviously are in collision. Most persons have a priority of values, but the rank order will differ. The run for the roses of national office is dotted with areas of self interest, special interest, hunger for power.

One would be hopelessly naïve to believe that everyone, in or out of organized religion, will always measure his/her vote or political allegiance by the best ideals or values that person cherishes. Our faculty for choosing our best is inhibited by our fears. Political wisdom is that enough Americans vote their pocketbooks to win an election for a candidate. Short-run and immediate fears of having less money or financial security are more over-riding than long-run fears of total destruction by war or apprehension that continued pollution or water shortages will slowly stifle or parch human living. That makes much more difficult but also more necessary the continuing task beyond elections to inform, sensitize, and increase awareness of the threats to our living and how these threats may be ameliorated.

Furthermore, authentic political dialogue is too frequently painted over with with innocuous generalizations, profitless name-calling, pretty pictures and photo opportunities. That has been so, and will be. But that is no excuse for giving up the search for what will make for peace, feed the hungry, extend freedom, encourage responsibility. In our world of social transactions, there is inevitably intermingled the world of politics in all important decisions.

Political advocacy and dialogue must be open. Not for a moment would I want Jerry Falwell stopped from arguing his political views, much as I detest many things he says (or Jimmy Swaggart or Jesse Helms). But not to allow them and others to impose their religious doctrines on me or any other citizen. Let their views be heard. If the values which inform them differ from mine, then my response must be in terms of the values I hold and the unlike perceptions of the history and faith which are mine.

“Something there that doesn’t love a wall” - no walls to shut out political give and take.

I like the way George Marsden, a professor at Calvin College, addresses this whole subject. He makes the same distinction between church and state, religion and politics, that I have tried to make. He criticizes the fundamentalist thrust for a “Christian America.” He notes that it invariably invokes an historical argument for a return to some presumed “Christian America.” Marsden asks, to what shall we return – Reformation theology, or the principles of the Declaration and Constitution? He goes on:

“In the Reformation, Protestant leaders expected nations to be explicitly Christian, to support the true church and to penalize all others. Today’s theocrats may not go so far; yet they want civil laws based on Reformation interpretations of divine laws. But the Declaration does not root laws there. The ‘laws of nature and nature’s God’ are very different in concept from the Biblical notion, which is wholly unalluded to in American documents. The symbolism of the new government was secular. Even the Reverend John Witherspoon (a Presbyterian minister), one of the founders and a signer of the Declaration, did not appeal to Reformation theology that the theocrats of today appeal.

“The practice of the early republic points to a middle way between stark extremes. Compromise is the genius of the American political system. America is not built on the idea that American should be Christian in the sense that today Iran is Moslem or Russia is Marxist. Christians have to play by the rules of the civic game. One of those rules might be that no matter how strongly the Bible or other revelation informs our political views, for the purpose of civic debate and legislation, we will not appeal simply to religious authority.” (CONTEXT, 7/1/83)

One last point (which could be elaborated for days) – there never has been a time in history when a religion was official, to the exclusion of other religions, when that sole dominance has not left a record of bigotry, persecution, bloodshed, and the stifling of the questing human spirit.

Go For The Gold

October 7, 1984
Lakeland

Introductory Remarks

The theme today may strike some of you as trifling when the celebration of religion should be serious. I will accept that criticism, although I will be unconvinced that the subject is trivial. When the Greeks, founders of the Olympic Games, gave the victor not money but a wreath of leaves, they were exhibiting the fact that in their scales of values (set forth by Plato), honor stood very high, higher than money.

Any activity so emphatically woven into our national fabric as sports, of necessity, reflects our values and priorities. In the talk-back I will gladly receive your rebuttals.

Sermon

“Go for the Gold.” That was a prevailing national attitude during this summer’s Olympic Games in Los Angeles. The United States was host to the world (other than the Soviet Union and most of its allies). There were chants: “USA! USA! USA!” We felt thrills of pride and admiration when Joan Benoit of Kennebunk, Maine, won the women’s marathon; when Carl Lewis won four golds; when the U.S. basketball team exhibited its mastery; and so on as the daily results tallied an increasing number of gold medals for the USA. Greg Louganis and Mary Lou Retton could have won national offices if elections had been held the week after the Olympic Games. We felt area pride when Rowdy Gaines of Winter Haven won the gold at the age of 25 when most competitive swimmers are “over the hill.” The Olympic Games of 1984 were an astonishing, spectacular pageant – and the USA won the most golds.

Gold has been humankind’s most precious and sought-after prize long before history began to be recorded, and still represents wealth and power. Cortes in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru destroyed unique civilizations to get their gold. The 49ers and the Alaskan gold rush are events in our history which not only meant great wealth for some and death and misery for an uncounted number, but also were powerful social impulses moving our population West and North. The myth of El Dorado – where large amounts of gold were reputed to be found – stirred men’s desires and expeditions for hundreds of years.

Go for the Gold – humans always have. In 1984 the Olympic gold was an El Dorado that we of the USA won more than anybody else. Not just incidentally, the 1984 Olympic Games made a profit of millions of dollars through sale of TV time to advertisers, souvenir sales, and many fund-raising efforts. Go for the gold!

Like millions of others all over the world, I spent many hours watching the contests, the spectacular opening show and parade of the athletes of many nations. Yet since the heat of patriotic blood cooled down, I have had some nagging thoughts that I want to share with you – thoughts about sports, big money and patriotism, the values and triumphs of sports contests, make a few comments about competition and cooperation, and in conclusion ask if our national values could or should be transvalued to the end that we will have pride in and support world values.

First of all consider the sports phenomenon. I did not take the time to check the TV programs to calculate the hours on the tube just this week which will be devoted to baseball, professional football, college football, boxing, and other games. Neither could I hazard a guess at the total number, perhaps millions, who have been and will be in the stands this weekend watching the athletes compete. Nor could I guess at the value of free advertising sports is given through the daily sports sections of newspapers and the sports time on the 11 o’clock news. Whether this is a natural or created obsession I leave to the social psychologists. But there is not doubt as to the fascination.

Consider the scandals which frequently surround college football, so-called “amateur” football. Somewhere I read that the charges of recruiting violations leveled against the University of Florida will cost that university’s sports program somewhere around 1½ million dollars because of ineligibility to play on TV or in the numerous bowl games which have become so much a part of our American Christmas [and] New Year’s holiday Saturnalia. Sports are big business. Jack Kelley, U.S. Olympic Committee Vice-President, and a one-time Olympic athlete, said “Let’s be honest, a proper definition of an amateur today is one who accepts cash, not checks.” [CJW note: CONTEXT]

Should you happen to begin thinking that I am so un-American as to condemn spectator sports, I am little different from many of you, particularly those of the male gender. I was taken, often, to Fenway Park to see the Boston Red Sox play, before I ever went to school. I knew the names of the players and how the game was played before I learned my ABCs. The Red Sox still cause me grief every August. I watch some football and baseball games on TV, but I hope not as an overwhelming pre-occupation.

No, I’m not anti-sports. What concerns me is the over-emphasis. A cartoon shows a group of little league baseball players clustered around their coach. He is saying to the little boys, “All right men, this is it. There is no tomorrow.” No tomorrow for 10 year old boys?? A colleague of mine, a few years back, was minister of one of our churches in the Milwaukee area, [and] preached a sermon on “The Religion of the Green Bay Packers,” criticizing the philosophy of the then-coach, the late Vince Lombardi, “Winning isn’t every thing, it’s the only thing.” However, my friend said he was careful to reserve his sermon until he had accepted another church far away and was soon moving. [CJW note: 8 o’clock Mass]

I had a dream – what if the millions of sports buffs had 1/4th the knowledge of political, constitutional, economic, disarmament, civil rights issues as they do about the Super Bowl, the World Series, the Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, the Gators, Seminoles, Hurricanes? Would our elected leaders then be compelled then to exhibit more informed and relevant leadership? But I’m afraid that’s just a dream.

Should we wonder about the connection between sports and gambling? The Ledger reported recently that betting on college football games is up 15-20% at legal sports books in Nevada. According to figures released by that state’s gaming control board, sports customers bet $807 million on sporting events in the fiscal year ending 6/30/84. That does not include all the millions – perhaps billions – bet and unreported in the 49 other states where such gambling is illegal. I am no blue-nose about gambling but: with assurance it can be said that when billions of dollars are bet on the results of games, there are sown the seeds of corruption, bribery, coercion.

Then, too, there are the injuries and fatalities in sports. Just 40 miles away last week, Mike Olivenbaum, the quarterback of the Clermont High School football team, died last week as a consequence of brain injuries suffered in football. In Eugene, Ore., Ed Reinhardt, a player for the University of Colorado lies comatose with little chance of recovery. He suffered a head injury in a game, September 15. Now there can be a reasonable response that such tragedies are a tiny percentage of the large number who play contact sports, but that statistic does not ease the sorrow for the Olivenbaum and Reinhardt families and their friends.

The Olympic Games – “Go for the Gold” – have become political weapons. The U.S. boycotted the Games in Moscow in 1980; the Soviets boycotted the games in 1984. I fail to see how the action of either nation contributed anything to the solving of international tensions. And trained athletes of each nation were deprived of the chance to compete against their peers.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “If there is one test of national genius universally accepted, it is success.” However, he wrote that in 1847, long before the sports era and the passionate urge to win.

But the priority of values, the principles we hold dear, are seldom utterly plain and clear when practically applied. Athletic contests, games, meets, bowls, are no more all bad than their absence would be all good.

There are many who by their athletic strength and ability have been able to climb out of ghettos or share-cropping to become affluent and recognized. Particularly members of the Black [CJW note: or Hispanic] minority – a Willie Mays, a Wilt Chamberlain, a Reggie Jackson, a Walter Payton [CJW note: Roberto Clemente, Juan Marichal] have achieved recognition, admiration, and wealth. Maybe the would have “made it” without professional sports, but the fact is that’s where they did. In most cases they became persons to emulate; they motivated others. Even when one recognizes that the percent who make great achievements is small, nevertheless they did – and through professional sports.

The recognition of the human dignity and worth of all persons is basic to religion. Consider Jesse Owens in the 1936 Games in Berlin. Not only did he become an American hero, but he thoroughly humiliated Hitler, and that dictator’s poisonous belief in an Aryan master race was publicly discredited.

Or, think of the late Jackie Robinson who broke the color barrier of Major League Baseball. To be sure, he had to have the skills – speed, a batting eye, baseball instinct, mental acuteness. But more than that he bore the burden of bigotry with courage and restraint. Jesse Owens [and] Jackie Robinson were early lights on a dawning awareness of what is just and what is unjust in this nation, an awareness which led to the later civil rights actions and legislation. That is religion in action.

Charles Dickens once commented (in the foreword to WORLD’S GREATEST MAN) “If a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I should be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever.” The rhinoceros of bigotry had power, but the power of truth and recognition of human dignity was authority exemplified in the courage of those who led the way.

One thing more – competition. Preceding this talk, Pat played the theme music from the movie, CHARIOTS OF FIRE. If you missed that movie, watch for it on TV. It is a story of a competition, but also cooperation. The athletes were fraternal, even to their peers from other countries. It is a movie of striving for excellence, but more than that, the fast sprinter from Scotland refuses to compete on Sunday because of religious scruples, resisting pressure even from high places. Then his teammate, a British Lord who already has won a gold, takes himself out of another race so that the Scot may compete and win on another day. I found it a movie of values, religious values, if you will, in the sense that Josiah Royce wrote:

“Since the office of religion is to aim toward the creation on earth of the beloved community, the future task of religion is the task of inventing and applying the arts which shall win men over to unity, and which shall overcome their original hatefulness by the gracious love, not of mere individuals, but of communities .... Judge every social device, every proposed reform, every national and every local enterprise by one test – does this help towards the coming of universal community?” [THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY]

There is support for the idea that cooperation is not only desirable but natural.... In an article given me by Keyno Hicks...

[Magazine clipping, from World Press Review, August 1984, p. 55: Science & Technology Section, Biology, Cooperation and Competition, by Patrick Bateson. It details the value and mechanisms of cooperation in evolution. E.g., mammals huddling together for warmth, mutual assistance in hunting, etc.]

Thus, from my point of view, sports have both flaws and virtues. Sports can be both disillusioning and inspiring. At the present time, there is overemphasis both in exposure and dollars. Sooner or later, the public will become saturated of the over-load and there will be adjustment. After all, the University of Chicago abandoned football in 1936, but remains a distinguished university. Sports are highly competitive, but team sports require a high degree of cooperation, and most sports are team sports.

A British historian once noted that “the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.” The spirit of team play, physical conditioning, development of leadership, and cooperation encouraged by sports had far-reaching and favorable consequences for that nation.

Distinctions must be made. The rules ever-need modification to meet new temptations and block fresh avenues of selfishness. Common sense is required. On the whole, our nation is composed of pragmatic people. I’ll continue to hope. Baron Von Steuben, when he came to America to train our raw Revolutionary soldiers, came to believe that no European army would be held together under equivalent hardships. He wrote a European friend, “The genius of this nation is not to be compared with the Prussians, Austrians, or French. You say to your soldier ‘do this’ and he doeth it, but I am obliged to say to these Colonials, ‘This is the reason you ought to do that’ and THEN he does it.” [Flexner’s WASHINGTON, p. 118]

That spirit in any area of life is a tradition to be maintained, and [is] where the gold of values is ever found.

Mugged By Reality

September 16, 1984
Lakeland

Undated
Port Charlotte

“I used to be an idealist, but I got mugged by reality.” That is the slogan on a T-shirt and is the seed of my theme today. In spite of our many comforts, toys, there is a wide-spread anxiety, even dread of the future. In attempting to deal with this, my talk divides into 1) the theme of progress, which has been an essential part of the last 2 or 300 years at least, 2) the events which have cast doubt on human progress (mugged by reality), 3) a look at what progress has meant, and 4) can we still have reasonable hopes for the human venture?

Many of us were reared in the belief that the future was bright. In my early years, two basic propositions were part of how I was programmed. In Unitarian churches, the fifth sentence in the belief affirmations was, “we believe in the progress of mankind, onward and upward forever.” In Universalist churches it was affirmed “we believe in the power of men of good will and sacrificial spirit to overcome evil and progressively establish the Kingdom of God.”

Science and engineering were providing benefits undreamed of by my grandparents. Through Thomas Edison’s inventive and managerial genius, the wonders of electricity brought well-lighted homes, factories, streets, the electric refrigerator, and marvelous appliances. Henry Ford developed the assembly line, and the Model T became the low-cost automobile for millions for business and the Sunday afternoon ride. Farm machinery and scientific soil and planting methods so increased agricultural efficiency and production that it was not difficult to predict (and many did) that soon no one in the world would be hungry.

In our land we cherished the American Dream. Born of our struggle for independence, the revolutionary victories at Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill and Yorktown; the promise of the frontier, richer in resources than ever known in the world, America was the New Jerusalem, the land of never-ending progress.

Woodrow Wilson convinced us that we were to fight WWI to make the world “safe for democracy” and that the war was a “war to end all wars.” In the 1920s, there were disarmament treaties culminating in the Kellogg-Brand peace pact of 1929.

In that same decade, millions of Americans were getting rich (on paper). Not only bankers, brokers, and business men were speculating in stocks, but also clerks, warehousemen, and crafts workers were playing the market. President Calvin Coolidge was widely praised when he pronounced, “The business of America is business.”

Surely Tennyson’s glowing 19th century optimism in the hymn we sang was coming true.

“Yea, we dip into the future,
far as human eye can see,
See the vision of the world,
And all the wonder that shall be,
Hear the war drum throb no longer,
See the battle flags all furled,
In the parliament of man,
The federation of the world.” (1842)

Then these bright, idealistic dreams were mugged by reality. The world was not safe for democracy. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, and the Japanese empire demonstrated that beyond any doubt.

The Depression, beginning in 1929, brought shocked awareness that unlimited American prosperity was not guaranteed. Millions of home owners, farm owners, business men, speculators, lost all their material possessions. The Dust Bowl, bank failures, 20-25% unemployed – the shining American Dream became tarnished.

World War II dimmed the dream of the progress of mankind onward and upward forever. Not only terrible battlefield carnage, but also cities were destroyed from the air; the holocaust demonstrated how demonic human nature could be. Thirty years after the “war to end wars,” 50-60 million people died.

The atomic bomb was designed, engineered, and delivered at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The science and engineering which had unlimited promise for the world also lead to nuclear weapons, supersonic bombers, all the sophisticated engines of destruction which can be unleashed by a few electronic impulses.

In THE TEMPEST, when Prospero, with his occult knowledge, and Ariel, spirit of magical powers, have brought together the shipwreck survivors, most of them scoundrels, innocent Miranda says to her father with delight,

“O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!”

Prospero, who has experienced treason and double-dealing, replies, “’Tis new to thee.”

The shadows, realities and threats of the last 50 years cast authentic doubt on how “beauteous mankind is” for the whole litany of reasons that you can cite as well as I can.

Even so, there seems to be limited sensitivity to the ominous threats to human survival. There were a couple of items that illustrated that, and I didn’t know whether to weep or laugh. This was a question addressed to TV Guide: “If we become involved in a nuclear war, would the electromagnetic pulses from exploding bombs damage my videotapes? Should I store them in a lead-lined container?” The same source reports that civil defense officials in Utica NY (we are told) plan to order 1000 hamburgers and 1000 cups of coffee from fast-food restaurants to sustain occupants of municipal fall-out shelters in the event of nuclear attack.

For the first time in American history, many parents do not expect life to be as good for their children as it has been for the parents. Working, saving, sacrificing for the sake of children and their future has been a distinctive and prevailing motivation. But many parents fear now that this may not come to pass.

In RICHARD III (Act IV, Sc. 1), Shakespeare’s tragedy of different times, the Bishop of Carlisle says,

“The woe's to come; the children yet unborn.
Shall feel this day as sharp to them as thorn.”

But if the foregoing reflected only an undiluted pessimism on my part, I would not have taken your time. I would moan my lamentations and wait with whatever stoicism I could muster for that giant blinding flash. But there’s more to be said. 2600 years ago, the philosopher Xenophanes wrote, “The gods did not reveal to men all the things from the beginning, but men, through their own search, find in the course of time that which is better.”

As an historian of the subject demonstrates, the idea of progress, the dream of human progress, did not suddenly spring forth full-born in the period 1750 to 1900, even though that period marks the zenith of the idea of progress. [CJW note: That hope is found in the Greek, Roman, and Judeo-Christian cultures even in sad times and [amid] barbaric events.]

No matter where one looks, the evidence of progress is unmistakable. The application of design and engineering to scientific theory has created a new world of wonders that would stagger the imagination of the author of the ARABIAN NIGHTS. Although some of us are critical of aspects of the medical profession, many of us would not be alive but for advances in healing and hospital technology. How many thousands of children do not have polio because of Dr. Salk? The achievements would fill large volumes.

In spite of the sad and deprived condition of the people who live at poverty level, there has been much more done in the last 50 years of our nation than ever before. Americans differ on the effective remedies for poverty, but there is more general sensitivity to the plight of the poor, the deprived, the abused – a consciousness that was only a faint glimmer in the early years of my life.

The opportunities for education have increased. The pool of men and women informed and skilled in scientific specialties and the liberal arts has grown beyond any predictions of a half-century ago.

What went wrong? I respond to what Kirkpatrick Sale (HUMAN SALE, p. 35) points to. Along with a belief in progress, we have been tempted by “technofix.” Oil shortage? Liquify coal. Food shortage? Irrigate the Sahara. Civil disturbances in the summer heat of cities? Cover them with geodesic domes to control temperature and if necessary alter oxygen mix to induce lethargy in the rebellious.

The technofix deals with externals. Furthermore, the side-effects of technofix are not always considered. Think about one “technofix” that went wrong – the Aswan Dam on the Egyptian Nile. As Kirkpatrick Sale notes (HUMAN SALE, pp. 30-31),

“The dam was built at vast expense in order to provide electricity for the Egyptian people, increase agricultural production through controlled irrigation, increase fish production by providing a new lake, and thus improve the general standard of living. But the dam has blocked off the Nile waters so that millions of tons of natural fertilizers end up in the lake behind it and never either get to the farmlands downstream, severely harming agricultural production, or to marine life in the delta, severely curtailing fish production. So the government planners were forced to use much of the electricity from the dam not for home or industry, but to make artificial fertilizers for the farmers, and someday they hope, artificial chemicals for the delta fishermen, thus using electricity to solve the problem created by the dam that was built to solve problems by electricity. But since the artificial fertilizers so far have been strange to the soil and didn’t work as well as the natural ones, and since the delta waters, stagnant now for much of the year, have bred a variety of diseases, the overall standard of living has in fact been lowered.”

Where, then, lies the hope or technofix that is more authentic than fantasy or daydreaming? Can we be more skilled in human survival than the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, who could turn it on but not turn it off?

A social scientist noted “one of the outstanding features of neurotic behavior is the patient’s inability to learn from the past.” (A. Koestler, THE INVISIBLE WRITING, p. 190) Can people, nations, learn from the past? Can there be more ethical imagination in understanding that all inventions we devise have side effects? If there are uncounted workers who will be displaced by the fast-developing robotic production devices, what happens to those for whom industry no longer has a place? There has to be a limit to those who can find low-paid jobs in fast-food restaurants, or sit at computer consoles. Big Brother’s dictatorship in Orwell’s 1984 kept the unemployed narcotized with plentiful supplies of cheap, chemical gin.

The second song we sang this morning encompasses our hope – “Faith in Ourselves”:

Faith in ourselves must be steadfast as a growing tree
Strong through the years strewn with rock and thorn
Our dreams may go astray
Still we salute each day
And left our hearts with faith reborn.

If one values the human enterprise, seeks to hold on, even by the fingernails, to the old but ever-new goal of justice for all, then we maintain the never-ending struggle for a kinder world.

To hold on to the realistic hope that Walt Whitman voiced: ... [Editor’s note: quote missing]

One of the lessons drummed into me as I was being taught homiletics was “never underestimate the intelligence of people; never overestimate their information.” Whether or not I have learned that lesson well or badly, personally, I am still convinced that in the social order, given fuller information, enough of the general public will respond to that which preserves and enhances human life and values rather than the opposite, and that has sustained me.

Rollo May observed (COURAGE TO CREATE, p. 58), “Anxiety comes from not being able to know the world you’re in, not being able to orient yourself in your own existence.”

It sounds like a cliché – but I believe lack of knowledge leads to anxiety, anxiety leads to fear, and fear leads to hate. If our idealism has been mugged by reality, then, if we have faith in ourselves, we will seek to inform ourselves on the source of anxieties, beyond slogans and fear.

I no longer can accept that “the progress of man is onward and upward forever.” There are too many conditions and qualifications necessary to maintain such glorious, inevitable optimism.

A figure that wise Aristotle used so many centuries ago is more compelling to me. “Those who are now renowned have taken over as if in a relay race (from hand to hand, relieving one another) from many many predecessors who on their part progressed, and thus have themselves made progress.” (METAPHYSICS)

In relay races, sometimes the baton is dropped in the act of passing. So with people and their civilizations. But the race continues. Aristotle also noted in his METAPHYSICS, “No one is able to attain the truth adequately, while on the other hand we do not collectively fail; but each one says something true about the nature of things, and while individually we contribute little or nothing to the truth, by all of us together, a considerable amount is amassed.”

One thing more: a sense of the sacred needs to be recovered. This is not a call to an old-time religion because many of the claims and demands of the religious right do not seem very sacred to me. The sacred is that which we revere – an aura which surrounds our highest values because those values are the most precious. The sacred nature of persons, the sacredness of planet Earth and the universe in which it has its being. As in [the] Torah when [the] Deity refused to reveal his/her name to Moses (“I AM what I AM,” I am what I will be), there need not be alarm if our theological designations differ, “we are what we are, the Earth is.” We will be what we choose to be. On such foundations, the sacred can sustain us.

The late Lillian Smith, a courageous pioneer in illuminating the cost of bigotry, wrote in KILLERS OF THE DREAM, (not degenderized)

“Man ... with feet tied to the past and hands clutching at the stars! Only by an agonizing pull of his dream can he wrench himself out of such fixating stuff and climb thin air into the unknown. But he has always done it and he can do it again. he has the means, the techniques, he has the knowledge and insight and courage, he has the dream. All have synchronized in beautiful harmony, for the first time in his history. Does he have the desire? That is a question that each human being must answer alone. It is a secret ballot that one by one we shall cast, and only those votes will be counted that are cast in time.”

Who Are The Unitarian Universalists?

September 9, 1984
Lakeland

We are a diverse lot in our 1000 or so churches and Fellowships. Wilbur, the historian, in the conclusion of his history, named freedom, reason, tolerance as the bonds which bind us together. I would add – fellowship.

We tend to indulge in a bit of ancestor worship. We remind people that 5 Presidents of the U.S. were from our numerically small ranks. We point with pride to Susan B. Anthony, pioneer for women’s rights; to Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross; to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William Ellery Channing; to Longfellow, Lowell, Hawthorne, Melville, Dr. Benjamin Rush, the Alcotts, Julia Ward Howe, Joseph Priestly, Frank Lloyd Wright, and many others.

We have great traditions – limitless inquiry, courage, reason, and sacrifice for individual freedom of belief. In concentrating on who we are now, you need not conclude that our history is not important or that our splendid Unitarian Universalist heritage and history are not worth talking about. One of the honored theologians in our movement, James Luther Adams, was reminded of a comment of Dr. Richard Cabot, who defined an idiot as a person who has no sense of the past, but lives only in the present. But, he went on, one who has nothing BUT a sense of the past is the victim of an inverted idiocy.

So, in reflecting [on] who we are now, I’m not dismissive [of] our past. I value it, I assume you do, and that you have a handle on the historical forces out of which Unitarian Universalism emerged and was sustained.

Who are we now? We are a tiny fraction of the total population of North America – perhaps one-tenth of 1%. There are some signs of growth, but too little and too soon to confidently predict that growth in numbers will be substantial. We confront a problem, not a unique one in religious institutions – as many drop out as drop in. Why? Any reason. In July, the “Peanuts” cartoon strip, Linus and Charlie Brown are talking. [CJW note: describe.] [Editor’s note: To view the cartoon online, click here: http://comics.com/peanuts/1984-07-24/]

There’s no easy or single answer to increasing the number of drop-ins and reducing the number of drop-outs. There can be continuing sensitivity to why a person leaves as well as enthusiasm when he/she arrives.

Who are we now? We are still a theologically diverse religion. We are sometimes knocked as free-wheeling agnostics who can’t kick a Sunday morning habit. To my way of thinking, because no creed is imposed, theological diversity is one of our strong assets from which, because of a lack of emphasis, we don’t draw enough interest.

For example, some people are surprised to learn that many Unitarian Universalists identify themselves as “Christian” and that there is a Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship organized continent-wide (a brochure for it is on the back table). Unitarian Universalist Christians are not orthodox Christians. I doubt many would be accepted by or comfortable in most Christian denominations. They choose to use interpretations of Christian symbols and language which express a stance toward life, death, and the human condition.

While I do not choose to be so identified, I would be false to my values if I in any way indicate or hinted that Unitarian Universalist Christians did not belong. I remember years ago, a panel which included a distinguished Unitarian Universalist minister who made this analogy. We emerged from the Christian tradition; we are a branch of the many-boughed Christian tree. Then he changed his figure of speech, saying “I speak the English language. But I am not a citizen of the United Kingdom.” He explained, the American Revolution secured our independence and separation from England, but English is still our mother tongue. Our institutions have been influenced by the Magna Carta, Parliaments, Shakespeare, the King James Bible, etc. But just because we secured our independence, we did not invent a new language. We kept what was best and went from there, or so he affirmed. Well, there’s some soundness to such arguments or analogies.

I, for one, was not convinced then, nor am I today. But without qualification, there’s a welcome place and always has been in our Unitarian Universalist circle for those who do trace such arcs of belief.

There was a time when rancor and bad-feeling characterized the debate between Christian Unitarian Universalists and those who did not want to be so identified. Fortunately there is little, if any, bitterness in the exchanges today.

I’m reminded of a story told by Harry Overstreet (THE MIND GOES FORTH). “Two duelists standing back to back, poised for the signal that will make them pace off the fatal distance from which they must shoot to kill. All is in order for one of the traditional, formalized dramas of conflict. All is in order except that one duelist has turned his head enough to say to the other over his shoulder, ‘I don’t feel very insulted this morning, do you?’”

Our theological diversity is no longer a duel or a tag-team wrestling match. We don’t feel insulted at another’s interpretation of religious experience of religious tradition. When we are at our best, our theological diversity motivates straighter thinking and kinder hearts.

Who are the Unitarian Universalists? Some might conclude that we are the “liberal-left,” not only on matters of religious interpretations, inquiring about the reasons and truths that most religious bodies take for granted, but also liberal on issues of the social order.

Our 1984 General Assembly meeting in Columbus, Ohio, in June, took positions on a number of issues in the social order. The few newspapers that I saw reporting on the event emphasized the resolution on gay and lesbian services of unions. That statement urged support of ministers who conduct services of union of gay and lesbian couples, even though legal marriages are denied by state governments. One might assume [by the reporting] that [this was the] only item deserving mention.

There were positions on other issues (as reported in July 15th UU World):

Support of nondiscriminatory, low-cost housing.

Urging governments to recognize the urban crisis by developing jobs for all, decent shelter, adequate healthcare and safe neighborhoods.

Resolved to urge Unitarian Universalists to educate themselves about toxic waste and become involved in efforts to see that environmental laws are enforced and to promote additional legislation where needed.

The delegates also recognized that the number of children abused and neglected is growing. Therefore there was advocacy for programs, economic and otherwise, that will help sustain and improve the dignity and rights to which all, including children, are entitled.

A resolution was passed urging the President of the U.S. to renounce the first use of nuclear weapons and conclude treaties with all nations renouncing first use.

Another resolution urged the renouncing of the proposed “Star Wars” scenario to put nuclear weapons in space.

The delegates also re-affirmed the 1983 resolution opposing overt and covert attempts to overthrow the government of Nicaragua and extend the position to all of Central America.

An accompanying resolution urged a reversal of the U.S. policy which denies asylum to refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala. Support for those churches that offer sanctuary was affirmed.

These positions were voted by 1258 delegates from 475 churches and Fellowships. Obviously with less than half of Unitarian Universalist Societies represented, there can be no claim that such resolutions represent the political and economic positions of all Unitarian Universalists. The positions taken are guides to the Unitarian Universalist Director of Social Action and the Unitarian Universalist Washington Office for Social Justice. Furthermore, the resolutions are invitations to local societies to study, discuss, and perhaps act on these matters.

There would be no more unanimity on all these resolutions dealing with the social order than there is with our religious identities.

I know of no recent studies, but a few years back, about 34% of Unitarian Universalists generally supported the Republican Party; 18% voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964. 28% disapproved of civil disobedience under any circumstances. 14% disapproved of our denomination’s work in the field of world peace.

Speaking as a political liberal (and I do not shrink from the term), Unitarian Universalists would be vastly poorer if there were no conservative voices among us. We do stand for unity in diversity. To begrudge a conservative point of view is contradictory to the value of “intellectual stimulation” which so many Unitarian Universalists place high on their reason for members of our churches and Fellowships.

Who are we? We are persons who consciously join or remain members of Unitarian Universalist churches or Fellowships because these are religious communities founded on freedom, tolerance, fellowship, and human dignity. I have mentioned before that “community” is increasingly used to describe our gatherings. Community is becoming nearly as basic as freedom in Unitarian Universalist identity. You recall the oft-quoted lines from T. S. Eliot’s poem, “The Rock”:

“When the stranger says:
‘What is the meaning of this city?
Do you huddle close together
Because you love each other?’
What do you answer?
‘We all dwell together
To make money from each other’?
Or, ‘this is a community’?”

There are numerous varieties of community: religious, business, professional, political, social, etc.

We gather in religious community, which builds into the foundation that I will not coerce you, nor you, me. We have always proposed tolerance as basic to our valuing system. But we are not tolerant of coercion! Debate, argue, present proofs, demonstrate, illustrate, illuminate in an effort to persuade. But don’t lean on me; I won’t lean on you.

In our Unitarian Universalist religion, we have believed that individuality and unity find form in the method of decision-making and working together we call congregational polity. Our individual beliefs are shared, but as these may differ among us, the action voted by the majority prevails. But the minority never loses its right to persuade, hoping to re-direct policies and actions.

But I (or you) should never be beguiled into believing that knowledge and reason reside solely in me, or you, or in any body, Unitarian Universalist or not. A proper modesty is both realistic and wise.

Years ago I clipped an item from a Unitarian Universalist newsletter. That church had a column called “Uncle Uni” which attempted to answer questions.

Dear Uncle Uni,

I have attended your church several times and have become very interested in Unitarianism. I was considering joining but was told that Unitarians are a bunch of intellectuals. As I am only of average intelligence, I don’t want to feel out of place. What do you advise?

- Worried in Hershey

Dear Worried,

Your problem is a common one but fortunately we have a solution. The next time we have a Congregational Meeting, attend even though you are not a member. Listen carefully to the discussion, and your worries will disappear, and you will come away with the knowledge that you can join our church without fear of embarrassment or concern.

- Uncle Uni

Who are the Unitarian Universalists? Neither the doorkeepers to a re-discovered Garden of Eden nor the guides to a Golden Age.

If our principles are more than mottos without substance, then the ever-present requirement is to be honest with ourselves and others.

We cannot be believers in anything just because we want to believe, but holding to what we must believe as knowledge, reason, justice, and tolerance compel us to believe.

[We believe in an] openness to and cultivation of ideas along with judgment to distinguish real differences.

And last, [we should] recognize the immense need, our human hunger to enhance and deepen the quality of human experience. That we do best together, not alone.

On Idolatries

May 6, 1984
Lakeland

September 1984
Port Charlotte

Sources of the Living Tradition – IV
On Idolatries

“(The) sin of idolatry is the characteristic religious temptation of the 20th century.” This sentence, written by Robert McAfee Brown, a Christian theologian. It appropriately introduces this fourth in the series, Sources of the Living Tradition. The living tradition we share draws from humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.

In attempting to deal with this subject, [we will consider] the definition of idolatry along with its extensions of meaning, what humanist teachings are, and why they are a proper method and guide in assessing the many claims of truth that are constantly thrust upon us.

Idolatry is the worship of a man-made image as a god. Archaeology, scripture, and history point to many instances. There was the sacred stone, such as the Kaaba of the Moslems. Other religious cultures carved stone or wood in human or animal shape, the image of the god. Sometimes the image was anointed with oil to appease the appetite of the good spirit or spirits. The sacrificial practice grew; ritual sacrifice of animals and persons were performed to placate the god so that the god’s power would be beneficent, not cruel. Priests became the proper ones to offer sacrifice with ritual words, ceremonial chants, beseeching prayers. As nomadic peoples became more settled, shelters were built to protect the god from rain and wind. Thus the first temples were built.

But excessive veneration or adoration of the idol became more important than the reality it represented. A human-made object became the recipient of ultimate loyalty. The source was forgotten; the image was feared and the ceremonies were conducted with awe. The idols persisted long after the death of the ideas which gave them birth. The stone, brass, and wood were adored; the creative spirit was ignored or debased.

The revolt of the Hebrews against idolatry represents one of the enduring contributions of Judaic religion. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image; thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them ....” [Exodus 20] Many other prohibitions against idolatry are found in the Torah (Ex. 20/23; Lev. 18/21; Lev 26:1, Num. 35 51/53; Ps. 97/7).

However, idolatry is not confined to a golden calf or a brass Moloch. There are many idolatries of mind and spirit. Think how this scripture is for many an idolatry. “The Bible says ....” And what it says become[s considered to be] without error. The scripture which revolts against idols becomes an idol. If there is anything which is assured, it is that history and culture are dynamic, changing. True, there is wisdom in the scripture (as well as a great deal of folly); there is inspiration for many circumstances; there is literary excellence (as well as an abundance of literary mediocrity). There is understanding to be gained of the times, tensions, and issues which produced the various writings. But to believe that everything was said for all times is idolatry. Robert McAfee Brown notes “At no time is the church in greater peril than, when fighting idolatry without, it succumbs to idolatry within.” (THE SPIRIT OF PROTESTANTIM, p. 44). Or as Reinhold Niebuhr put it, “We must fight falsehood with our truth (but also) we must fight the falsehood IN our truth.”

But there could be no greater error than to believe that idolatry is confined to religion. There are many idolatries.

Is there not for some an idolatry of money, of possessions? We remember King Midas in Greek mythology and Silas Marner in George Eliot’s fiction. But the myth and the story represent authentic pitfalls. I read that someone saw a bumper sticker on a luxury automobile in Southern California [which read,] “Prosperity – A Divine Right.”

I do not object to economic well-being, self-sufficiency, or living graced with the necessities and comfort that a fair income brings. Most people I know earn the rewards an occupation or business brings. But prosperity as a “divine right” - that is idolatry. If one is blindfolded by thousand-dollar bills, sun and light and other persons are shut out.

Nationalism can be idolatry. Not our country right or wrong, right or wrong our country. When the nation is an idol; the mistakes, misuse of power, and self-centeredness become idolatry – excessive veneration. The best use of nationalism is to defend and promote the ideals of liberty, life, and citizen government. The Statue of Liberty is not an image to be worshiped but a symbol of our historic welcoming of the dissenter, the poor, the exiled. The awe-inspiring statue of Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial is not an image to be worshiped, but a stunning reminder of a life devoted and sacrificed for union and emancipation.

We stand in peril of an idolatry of escalating nuclear weaponry. We are urged that if we make the proper sacrifices that idol will take care of us. Idol worship of chain-reacting destruction will no more save us than the heated brass Moloch could save the [CJW note: Canaanites] Phoenicians when they tossed their children into the gaping red-hot jaws of that ancient idol. Ortega y Gasset noted, “20th century man is become a technologically competent barbarian.”

I believe any one of you could create your own list of idolatries – whenever fanaticism squelches openness, there is idolatry.

[CJW inserted: In this election year, we are conscious that the political managers are more worried about a candidate’s image than substance. A candidate who may have been perceived as lackluster or humdrum has to show in a debate that he has “fire in his belly” by aggressive jump-ups in a debate or strong statements in a TV commercial. Another candidate projects the image of one with new ideas. Still another projects the image of affability and international statesmanship by strolling the Great Wall of China or shaking hands with the Bishop of Rome. Yet another projects the image of a “Rainbow Coalition” - gathering, we are supposed to believe, supporters from all ethnic and social groupings. I guess I must have been 11 years old when Calvin Coolidge’s picture wearing an American Indian war-bonnet was in all the newspapers and news-reels at the movies. I still don’t know what Cal in a war-bonnet was supposed to demonstrate. But it was a forerunner of the deluge that TV has brought. I’m afraid many of us are idolaters because we fall for the image instead of seeking substance relentlessly.]

The sources of our living tradition also propose that humanist teachings will counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, as well as warning us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.

What are humanist teachings? Although this may be repetitious to many of you, there seem to be such lurid lies and unconscionable distortions of humanism that have been reported to me by some of you that not to re-emphasize humanism’s teachings would seem to soft-pedal this humane emphasis.

Robert Ingersoll summarized a basic stance (in his rather florid 19th century oratorical style), “Investigate, not follow. Do not be cringers and crawlers. Do not throw away your reason to save your soul; you will lose it, you will become an intellectual serf.”

Humanism is not a dogmatic absolute. It can never be. Humanist teachings affirm [that] the sources of our knowledge are human inheritance and human experience, and that humane values are the guide to our conduct. Humanist teaching is a method wherein the world of human transactions, as persons understand and perceive these, are the basis for coming to conclusions, establishing and defending values. These teachings, guided by reason, take seriously thought, emotion, history, intuition, imagination, learning, and culture, guided by reason (deductive = conclusion follows from premises; inductive = reasoning from part to whole, particulars to generals).

Perhaps a story I read can illustrate good reasoning from fallacious reasoning. A U.S. citizen and a Soviet citizen were arguing about the freedom each possesses in his own country. The American says, “Why I can stand on Pennsylvania Avenue in my nation’s capital and shout ‘The President of the United States is a jerk!’ The Russian counters, “I have the same freedom. I can stand in Red Square in Moscow and shout, ‘The President of the United States is a jerk!’ and nothing will happen to me.”

If one is guided by reason, the faulty premise is readily apparent.

We are guided by science. Not science as an absolute. That, too, would be idolatry. Science is a method of discovery and verification. The scientific method would include:

Sensitive curiosity concerning reasons for happenings. [CJW note: “You don’t scratch if you don’t itch” - Einstein].

A) Careful and accurate observation. Careful and accurate use of pertinent data gathered by others.
B) Patient collecting of other data.
C) Persistence in the search for explanation.

Delayed response – holding views tentatively for suitable reflection.

A) to permit adequate considerations of possible options.
B) a plan which looks forward to a prediction of the probable outcome or solution of experiment or research.

Weighing evidence with respect to its
a) pertinence,
b) soundness,
c) adequacy.

Respect for another’s point of view – an open-mindedness and willingness to be convinced by evidence.

This scientific method (it could be phrased different ways) has achieved discoveries that beggar any adjectives one could string out. Historian Barbara Tuchman (BIBLE AND SWORD, p. 148) noted, “Not God, but gravity, Isaac Newton discovered, brought the apple down on his head.” The law of gravity is a grand instance of uniformity in our universe.

In 1650 AD, Archbishop Ussher studied the Bible and figured out that the world was created 4004 BCE. Then in the scientific age, geologists studied the earth and the oceans. They demonstrated that the deposit of sodium chloride in the ocean indicated that earth cannot be less than 100 million years old. The geologists studied the strata of rock and showed Earth’s age to be not less than 300 million years. Further studies, disintegration of radio-active elements, e.g., indicate Earth is even more ancient.

Then along came the paleontologists whose studies of fossilized remains and human artifacts have dated human appearance on this planet at least 3 million years ago. Most persons in our tradition put much reliance on the findings of the scientists and no reliance on Archbishop Ussher’s pronouncements 350 years ago.

Similarly, we are guided by the astronomers, astro-physicists, physicists, and chemists in the basic knowledge they are achieving about the physical, chemical, electrical structure of the universe. [CJW note: Oppenheimer - “good morning”]

But the rules of reason and the methods of science are not gods, not absolutes. If they were so held, they would be idols and that variety of idolatry is little, if any, more attractive than other idolatrous perversion. The other values we have discussed in this series are essential – the worth and dignity of persons, justice, acceptance as persons of each person and by each person, the responsible search for truth, the right of individual conscience.

To uphold and support these values, Unitarian Universalists may or may not hold to a traditional image of God or any idea of God. Have you ever thought that it must be an immature conscience that holds that men and women would not be good except for the monitoring of a stern, hanging judge in the sky? It is as if they really did not believe good was good, and [it] had to be coerced.

The keystone values overarching all others are the value of justice, human fellowship, and human dignity. John Lovejoy Elliot, who was a well-known Ethical Culture leader, once wrote, “I have known good men and women who believed in God and good men and women who didn’t, but I’ve never known a good man or women who didn’t believe in people.”

Religion In The Absence Of Service

June 3, 1984
Lakeland

If religion is mainly a matter of the Sunday service – the Roman Catholic Mass, the Protestant service with Lord's Prayer and Bible text, or Unitarian Universalist meeting with our Green Book songs, discourse on this and that, rounded out not with a benediction but a sharing of minds and the communion of the coffee pot, then for our kind of calendar, religion takes a vacation.

On the last day of school when I was a lad, there was a ritual chant:

No more pencils
No more books
No more teachers' dirty looks

Perhaps for the last Sunday of our regular worship season, we too might respond to a jingle:

No more pulpit
No more plate
No more worry
coming early or late.

I kid you not – for me there is a big sigh of relief in finishing the last sermon of the season. It is not so much mental or physical fatigue but rather the need for the mind to be fallow for a time so there will be a better compost for new growth. But that is a preacher's reason, or, alibi, if you like. If suddenly it were thrust upon me to prepare a discourse for next Sunday, I'd have some miserable hours, let me assure you. One CAN become stale.

But that is just one kind of response. More and more of our fellowships and churches continue Sunday meetings through the summer. Usually, the minister is not in the pulpit but in the audience, if he/she is in town. There is value in the regular continuity of the fellowship gathering. I would welcome our planning for such regularity in spite of the probability of low attendance. There could be coffee and conversation (planned or spontaneous) on the patio early enough to escape noon. heat. This is a suggestion for future planning. But I, for one, would he unhappy if there was spoken or unspoken obligation for anyone to be present.

Even in the absence of service, the regular worship service that is, religion always has, and can now guide us to the centers of what is vital – the Universe and human relations.

The Universe is our home – our only home. Our man-made polluted air, jangling telephones, crowded traffic, irritated shoppers and sassy salespeople, macho speeders are causes enough to open our feelings to the natural world. There are those who, less than others, respond to the wonder, beauty, and strangeness of the world we did not create or manufacture. Some persons may be oblivious:

"A primrose on the river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him
And nothing more."

But most of us, I believe, are somewhat more kin to Wordsworth's feeling (THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US):

"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. -- Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."

We can regain our hearts by opening our thoughts and feelings to Nature. I have been on the shores of great oceans and contemplated the far horizons where sea and sky become one; I have become excited as crashing surf pounds against craggy rocks, ceaselessly. Have you, too, experienced the wonder of snow-capped giant mountains, monuments of mysterious grandeur, whether seen from above in an airplane or from a valley below?

One need not travel to the Pacific or Atlantic or Rocky Mountains to know the worship experience that Nature generously offers. Walk around Lake Morton in the quiet dusk when swans are nesting and the ducks are gliding silently through the still waters, their propulsion unseen. One of the paths of my walking takes me now and then to Camphor Drive. Do you know it? The massive, old, twisted trunks and abundant foliage provide a calm, almost other-worldly benison in a fevered world. One senses that those so-called "Pagan" peoples who worshiped the tree as a symbol of life were not far wrong.

It is difficult to remain angry at the world when there is so much in Nature "that is ours" if only we will pause and sense the majesty of growth, change/renewal, beauty, persistence. The feelings engendered are religious, even though the formalities of worship are absent.

Human relations, too, are at the vital center of religion even in the absence of the religious service. The reading from L. P. Jacks is a pertinent guide. Do you recall the reading? Religion is taught in the academic studies by accuracy, truthful speaking, humanity, breadth of mind, thoroughness, reverence, fair play. This is not just a superb model for teachers and students, but a guide to religion, whether or not there is ever a formal worship service.

What one's real religion is has to do with conduct – not only in school out also in the many interlocking circles of our lives. Are my relationships with other persons honest and kind? Do I become mightily angry for trivial causes? Do I see other persons as objects or stereotypes? If I am indignant about an issue, do I attack the person rather than the problem? Am I ever contemptuous of another person? Most of us, if we are candid with ourselves, would acknowledge, even if only to ourselves, that at times we have failed the tests of an I-Thou basis for meeting another person. When we do miss the mark, we have been backsliders to the values we profess about the dignity and worth of every person. That is a test of religion. When there are times when we fail, with an "E" or an "F", we have the power to reach with determination to achieve higher marks.

Simone Weil (quoted in "Context") in her essay, "Human Personality" wrote (her words not degenderized), "You do not interest me! No man can say these words to another without committing a cruelty and offending against justice."

One thing more, I have been talking about "Religion in the absence of service," referring to the regular Sunday service. But there is another and important way this phrase can be perceived. Religion without service in the cause of the humane values religion professes is a paltry religion, irrespective of whatever satisfactions one may get from measured chants, ritual glitter, or intellectual stimulation.

Because the letter named James in the Christian scriptures is not a testament of faith as Christian dogma developed, some Christian theologians have dismissed it. Martin Luther called the Letter of James an "epistle of straw" and wished that it were not in the New Testament. Not faith, but conduct, was the true loyalty of a follower of Jesus, testified the unknown author of "James":

Ch 1 22/27:
"But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:
For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.
If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain.
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."

Service is the center of religion with a boundless circumference. When one reviews the admirable persons one has known, is not "doing" an ineradicable part of the picture we hold or remember? Some may have been social prophets speaking out against injustice or cruelty, organizing or supporting social movements designed to make a change for the better. Others may devote their lives as helping professionals, loving homemakers, loyal workers, parents who are both wise and kind. Others may (such as our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee or the American Friends Service Committee) work steadily to help people help themselves. Fortunately for the survival of the human venture until now, the list of doers is long and the efforts endless.

Today, the Tommy Award expresses the gratitude we feel for those who "do" religion not just testify to it. [CJW note: Freda is our example today.] If you review the recipients of the awards given on the plaque, you will perceive at least some of the expressions of religion in action. You will also note that the awards have no bias toward or against any particular religious beliefs. [CJW note: Particular “faith” loyalties are irrelevant to the Tommy Award. Has the community been served? That is the test.]

Thomas Jefferson once said "the greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture." (Quoted Vol 2, p.126, JEFFERSON, Dumas Malone)

Now, one can argue that adding a useful plant may not be the greatest service to a culture. Jefferson himself gave many services, and most would judge [them] more important to our country. However, his statement illustrates that there are hardly any limits to service, individual or social. Priorities differ in different times and conditions. But all human endeavor for the human venture is religion in action.

There are American Indian cultures, the Nootka Indians, for one, whose language contains no nouns, only verbs. In that language, there are no things, only processes.

What a test of religion it would be if there were no nouns: Truth not as an intellectual formula, but something one does.

Justice not as an abstraction, but something one performs.

The only way to argue for the existence of God would be the way one behaves.

Well, we can't polevault out of our culture or abolish our language forms or structures of thought. Yet, it would enrich many lives if we were unable to conceive of religion apart from service. If we had to "do" religion, not just believe it.

In the interim between our regular Sunday services, I will try to appreciate, to feel, to grasp the world.. In the absence of Sunday services, we may embrace the wonderful world ever-waiting for our discovery and re-discovery, and that, whether or not there are regular meetings for worship. Furthermore, may consciousness be honed to become more aware that there are no important religious beliefs apart from service – service to others.

Conflict As Human Necessity

May 20, 1984
Lakeland

Anyone who has churned tempestuously, inwardly, when in conflict may very well say, that if conflict is human necessity, it is one we should be able to do without. "He has a conflict," we say, indicating that there is some contradiction between inner wishes or convictions and what one is able to do in society, feels free to do in society, or what one is permitted by society to do. When one speaks of conflict in a social group, a political party, a church, a government, one usually refers to collisions of persons with consequences of ill-feeling. There's a biographical anecdote about John Hunter, a famous 18th century Scottish physician, who remarked, "I am at the mercy of any rascal who causes me to lose my temper," and immediately thereafter died in a fit of rage due to a heart attack. (AM Sch Vol 15, #4, p 418)

Instead of defending conflict as human necessity, should I not do better by exhorting you about the line in the 37th Psalm, "Cease from anger and forsake wrath?" Quite apart from the politically complex arguments which engender conflict between nations, why should I speak of conflict as human necessity? Can conflict do us any personal good? Andre Maurois wrote that personal quarrels (in the reign of Louis XIV) were so fierce and frequent that between 1589 and 1607, seven thousand men met their death in individual duels (Maurois, VOLTAIRE, p. 1). When one feels the irritations in the belly, the poundings of the heart and the headaches which art the consequences of being in conflict with ourselves and others, how can it be asserted that conflict is human necessity? Would not better advice be to quote Norfolk who speaks to the enraged Buckingham (HENRY VIII):

"Be advis'd;
Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot,
That it do singe yourself: we may outrun
By violent swiftness, that which we run at
and lose by over-running."

However, I agree with Herbert Thelen that "conflict has become a dirty word, for our emotional reactions to the term blind us to the fact that without conflict neither growth nor education would be possible." To seek to avoid all conflict because stormy experiences may result is as unrealistic and self-defeating as it would have been for the children of Israel to refuse to cross the path of divided waters because their feet might have become wet.

Conflict is a contradiction between one's needs and desires and the needs and desires of others. Sometimes it is a result of the interaction of personalities within the family – jealousy, selfishness, over-protectiveness, excessive domination. There is a battle of the sexes, or so we read. We want to succeed in competitive activity, be #1, yet want to retain the complete goodwill of others. There is conflict between religions and in the workings of any one religion.

Religion is often the symbol of, and thought to be the instrument of the reconciliation of conflict. Such a harmonizing purpose has merit as long as there is no avoidance of necessary encounter and no attempt to hide inevitable disagreement. To turn the other cheek does not require silent submission to ideas we believe harmful; to walk the second mile does not imply that we must plod in craven acquiescence along paths we believe to be wrong.

Someone saw a sign in an obscure, inelegant restaurant, "If you get bad service here and you resent it, you're right in resenting it. You'll still get bad service, but you're right." The feeling of conflict seems quite appropriate at times.

Conflict is a vice when it generates only destructive collision; conflict is a virtue when it is the instrument of encounter, when it is the vehicle of convictions wherein meanings are made more clear. One of the continuing obligations of the human venture is to maintain such a distinction.

Sometimes instances of conflict point beyond the immediate. Consider the bloody conflict in July of 1979 between members of the Communist Workers Party and a segment of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina. Five human beings were killed. The CWP organized a demonstration march with the slogan "Death to the Klan." Not long ago a jury freed the accused killers, who were Klansmen. Will Campbell, a well-known Christian minister and writer who has lived all his life in the area of the tragic killings was called by many out-of-town journalists to get his views. Most felt that the verdict was an outrageous miscarriage of justice. Campbell (CHRISTIANITY AND CRISIS, 5/14/84) asked each caller if they had called the State Department. The callers asked, don't you mean the Department of Justice? “No,” Campbell replied, "The State Department." When the callers pointed out that the State Department does not deal with civil rights violations, domestic matters, Campbell replied, "and which of those departments has been in charge of indoctrinating the American citizenry that Communists, whether they be the most doctrinaire and mainline Bolshevik, or peasants of Southeast Asia and Central America who recognize bread but not ideology, and who know as little about Marxism and capitalism as I know about directing Luciano Pavarotti, are always and forever the enemy and do not deserve to live?"

Then Campbell related how the wife of one of the men who was on trial for the killings told him that she had filled out the form for her husband to join the KKK two weeks prior to the killings. She said, "He don't read too well." Then she asked Campbell a question, "Preacher, tell me how come it's just fine for us to send our boys all the way across the ocean to kill some people who never bothered us, people we never even saw who the government tells us might be Communists but when some people are right here in our country wearing signs saying they're Communists and that they're going to
kill us, and well, if our boys kill them, they get put in jail." Campbell couldn't answer that question, could you? I couldn't.

Conflict may have many obscure roots as well as the visible growth. Some time ago I read of a research scientist whose research into minerals suggested that there may have been a surprising origin of some unique minerals discovered in meteors. These scientists suggested, tentatively that certain rare minerals found only in meteor fragments did not exist in space either. When the meteor struck the Earth, the force of the collision – the heat and pressure of impact – created new minerals. These minerals did not exist prior to collision. But the creation of the new was the product of great destruction – the fragmentation of the meteor and the damage to the earth it struck.

I wouldn't know enough to argue with any mineralogist who dismisses this theory, but the notion is suggestive of human behavior. Some great ideas and inventions are born of conflict. Medical techniques develop sometimes under the terrible necessities of battle casualties. Such advances are paid for at too high a price. Like the minerals created by the impact of meteor, great destruction has been the companion of the new and valuable when war has been the cause of discoveries. How [can we] maintain the conditions for creation born of dialogue and disagreement while at the same time avoiding the loss, pain and grief of destructive collision between persons or nations?

The totalitarian approach is not the answer. Pavlov demonstrated that living organisms could be conditioned in their behavior. After training, the dog would salivate when Pavlov rang the bell. But such is not the human behavior we want. The dog was manipulated for an end, his appetites exploited, his needs made the means for Pavlov's ends. But all worthwhile religions assign a higher priority than that to the human personality and its potential for growth. Conditioned obedience is alien to the values of a religion which holds freedom as more essential for growth. This holds even when conflict, inner or external, is the price of freedom.

Because freedom for self-direction must allow for the differences and imperfections of the human condition, freedom can never walk alone. The chance of error, struggle and the pains of conflict are perennial companions. But the price is worth it. Conflict with oneself and others can be avoided only at the cost of giving up freedom. Such a price is much too high even to achieve good digestion and untroubled sleep.

The human task then is to live in ways that the productive results of conflict are maintained but the destructive impact of violent conflict is reduced. How can we control (in Thelen's words) "the basic themes of conflict – conflict between our wishes and the wishes of others, between our present needs and our future capabilities, between our animal nature and our social ethic, between what we are and what we want to be, between our easy habits and our creative urges"?

Many criticisms can be made of Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan Revolution he headed in the 17th century. But one development of that struggle demonstrated that the "priesthood of all believers" connected freedom and growth in the creative conflict – i.e., peaceful disputes. The historian writes:

"For him the purpose of such machinery (decision by discussion pointing to a consensus) is to find something out, to discover something which is there to be discovered – discovered by hearing what each man's conscience has to say, out also by frank and open discussion among men wishing to learn the will of God. What he has learned from his experiences of the small democracy of the Christian congregation is the insight into the purpose of life which the common life and discussion of a democratic society can give as nothing else can. The root of the matter is that if discussion is at all successful, we discover something from it which could have been discovered in no other way." (See THE FREE CHURCH, Franklin Littel, Starr King Press, 1957)

When we are not steaming in a pressure situation, we are aware, many times, that some of our most difficult conflicts are not only with others, but also with ourselves. This is the plain truth contained in those words in the prayer of general confession of the Book of Common Prayer, "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us." One does not have to affirm what is to me outdated theology to perceive there is truth in the recognition that inner conflict weakens us. Inner conflict can make us feel that there is no health in us. As the poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote in the first three lines of "Everyman,"

The weariness of life that has no will
To climb the steepening hill:
The sickness of the soul for sleep and to be still.

How [should we] deal with these inner conflicts? One of the famous preachers of the 19th century was the unyielding fundamentalist, Dr. Lyman Beecher, father of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher. Robert Ingersoll called Lyman Beecher one of the wardens of the Puritan penitentiary. Dr. Lyman Beecher frequently worked himself into towering rages over the two movements which infuriated him most: Roman Catholicism and Unitarianism. Lyman Beecher kept two piles of sand in the cellar, and when his inner fury was getting near the uncontrolled point, he would go down to the cellar and shovel the sand back and forth until he regained his composure (TWO FRIENDS OF MAN, Korngold, p. 22). I have told some of you of a woman I knew, a minister's wife, in the days when the minister's spouse was expected to be an unpaid assistant to the minister. She saved her cracked dishes. When inner conflicts started to boil too high, Alice Milburn would go down to the cellar and throw the cracked dishes against the wall – this was her safety valve.

One of the New Testament legends is a superb example of mastery over inner conflict – or so I interpret it. As the old story has it, Jesus went to the wilderness to struggle with temptation. This is a stylized legend which has been told in various ways about the founders of other religions also. Toynbee has taken this type legend and fitted it into his philosophy of history, asserting that great religious leaders acquire their powers of leadership after such a wilderness experience. Toynbee called it "withdrawal and return."

Symbolically, we can interpret that the "devil" who tempted Jesus was his own mixed feelings. Given the belief structure of his times, Jesus was torn by the problem, "Can a man demonstrate his conviction that he was speaking God's will if he had no magic powers? "Command this stone to be made bread." In those days, ability to perform miracles was a sign that God was with a man.

Should not God be tested to discover if divine protection is assured before daring great things for God? "And he brought him to Jerusalem and set him on a pinnacle of the Temple and said unto him, "if thou be the son of God, cast thyself down from hence."

Then the subtlest temptation of them all, the devil taking him up an high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. "All this power I will give thee and the glory of them."

Jesus believed in the coming of the Kingdom of God. Should not people be compelled to be citizens in this kingdom, even though they did not understand it, nor yet want it? "If I seize power, everything will be well, for I mean well." This is the conflict of lust for power and the vulnerable soft spot to which so many persons of great ability have yielded.

The old legend in Matthew says that when Jesus had resisted the temptations and resolved his inner conflicts creatively, "lo, angels came and ministered unto him." This, too, is a symbolic way of stating that the peace and understanding that can come when conflicts have been resolved creatively.

The same story as told in Luke ends with a different note suggesting additional insight, "and when the devil had ended all temptation, he departed from him for a season (until an opportune time)." For a season – not forever. The nature of inner conflict ensures that it is a renewing encounter. Again and again we must wrestle with the conflicts within us. Life cannot be lived for long in quiet retreats or snug harbors; irresistibly our course becomes set for choppy waters. The times of inward testing persist.

Nothing is more difficult than to maintain the creative elements of conflict with ourselves and others. To master conflict creatively is an emancipation struggle, great in its rewards out gigantic in its difficulties. Aristotle said it well, thousands of years ago, "Anybody can became angry – that is easy; but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree, and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody's power and is not easy." However, there is accumulated wisdom which can be brought to bear; there is guidance available from other experience; there is suggestion from many human endeavors which can be helpful in making our conflicts part of the dynamics of our maturity.

First, we need not restrain a sense of healthy indignation at outrageous acts. Not all indignation is righteous, particularly when, it is a response of our injured vanity. But there are elements in situations which outrage human values. There are issues in the social order about which each of us should feel and express righteous indignation. The issues will differ from person to person. But to repress such anger multiplies our inner conflicts.

Conflicts can be constructive, too, when we speak with our best voice. There is no one of us who is helpless in all situations. Some situations, maybe, but not all. Even those who are reticent or reluctant to speak out have strength to contribute to the causes in which they believe. This is not a choice between hostile and peaceful ways of living, but rather a decision to make your convictions count or be lost in silence. So, if in the experiences of living you feel torn by conflict but at the same time hold strong convictions, you should speak with your best voice at all opportunities. How many causes were lost because of silence on the part of those who were supporters?

Last, it might be suggested that conflict can be constructive when affection remains warm. Do you remember the late Paul Goodman's story, from a cartoon ("The May Pamphlet")?

Tom says to Jerry, "Do you want to fight? Cross that line!"
Jerry does.
"Now", said Tom, "You're on my side."

Conflict can be constructive when affection remains warm – toward yourself on inner conflicts, toward others on outer. It is not difficult to get the message when a mood changes and a person begins attacking you and not your point of view in the dispute. The change is always an unhappy one. When the person is the target, not the problem, then the negative aspects of conflict work destructively. But when good-will and human love fulfill the law of right relations, then we may invest all vigor in the conflict of ideas. Out of such conflict can evolve new ways and refined ideas.

The human enterprise always needs the creativity that will come from the conflicts of problem solving. To that end, we can say with Carl Sandburg,

"Empty the last drop
Pour out the final clinging heart beat
Great losers look on and smile
Great winners look on and smile
Plunger take a long breath
And let yourself go."

The Great Commandment

April 15, 1984
Lakeland

June 1984
Port Charlotte

Sources of the Living Tradition – III

The Great Commandment

“Jewish and Christian teachings which call men and women to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves.”

This third in the series, “Sources of the Living Tradition” is a recognition that Unitarian Universalism has deep roots in Judaism and Christianity. Our religious affirmations and values did not spring out of nowhere in the Age of Reason, or from critical Biblical scholarship, or from the contributions of the Enlightenment, or from one General Assembly.

The focus of this affirmation is Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10-25/37). If this parable were the only tradition we had of Jesus, we would know a great deal about his Jewish religion, about his primary attitude that religion is not what you believe but what you do, and his universalistic attitude about the dignity and responsibility of all persons, even the rejected and despised.

The jurist (scribe lawyer), meaning an expert in the law of Torah, asked the question, “What am I to do to inherit eternal life?” It is written that the law expert was tempting Jesus – tempting for what purpose? Probably to trap Jesus into saying something that would violate the law or possibly to get a response that would be contradictory or self-serving. But Jesus turned the answer right back to the expert. In his reply, Jesus validated the Jewish tradition of both the jurist and himself.

Jesus responded like unto the Socratic way of inquiry, “What is written in the law?” The expert’s answer was correct. “You must love the Lord your God, heart, soul, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” That answer suggests that this brief, but comprehensive statement was commonly taught by the rabbis of the day as the condensation of Judaic religion. One scholar writes that there was need to condense the teachings, for there were 613 commandments in Torah, 365 negative and 248 positive ....

As most of you know, I cannot accept as true for me the God of the Torah, who was the God of Jesus and [the God] of the expert in the law. The ultimate mystery of the cosmic order and the human place in it remains a mystery to me. But there are those in our Unitarian Universalist tradition for whom such an affirmation is authentic. Respecting our diversity and not choosing to be dogmatic about my theistic agnosticism, there’s no problem for me in the inclusion of this source in our living tradition.

After all, there are many definitions of God, including the worship of the highest values one can idealize. Luke’s gospel says “the Lord Your God,” allowing a range of interpretation.

But the Judaic tradition did not stop there. The law expert properly goes on, “Also [love] your neighbor as yourself.” That, too, is basic in the Judaic tradition. Rabbi Hillel, a contemporary of Jesus, was once challenged, “Teach me all of Judaism while I stand on one foot.” Hillel did not begin to list all of the 645 commandments. He replied, “What is hateful to thee, do not do to thy neighbor. This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary.”

The expert on the law pushes Jesus – the Gospel says, “anxious to make an excuse for himself” - it would be interesting to know why he felt a need to justify himself, but that’s unknown. Anyway, he asks, “But who is my neighbor? Then he follows the matchless tale of the robbery and beating on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, the passing by of the priest and the Levite, and the practical assistance of the Samaritan, who cared for the victim, saw him to safety to the inn, and paid the innkeeper to continue caring for the wounded man.

The power of this parable is unappreciated if we fail to understand the Samaritan good neighbor. The expert in the law must have been startled. If we, like he, were asked “Who is your neighbor?”, we might tend to give easy answers. My neighbors are on my street, men and women on the job, members of my fellowship, my circle of friends.

To understand the universalism of Jesus’ parable, recall that the wounded victim was not a neighbor of the Samaritans in any usual sense of the word. There were centuries of hostility between the people of Judea and the people of Samaria. Samaria was once the Northern Kingdom, Israel, where ten of the tribes had settled.

In 722 BCE the Assyrians invaded like a “wolf on the fold” and that was the end of the Northern Kingdom. The Assyrians took into captivity the upper class and the artisans, leaving only the poorer peasants. Unlike the later Babylonian captivity of the Judeans, there never was a return of the exiles. The Assyrians colonized the Northern Kingdom with Babylonians and Syrians. Thus Samaria in Jesus’ day was an ethnically mixed land. This was cause for much contempt toward the Samaritans.

Another reason for Judean contempt toward Samaria was religious difference. While most of the Samaritans were Jews, their differences, religious practices were the cause of both dislike and misunderstanding. Contrasting with the prevailing religious beliefs of Jerusalem and Judea, the Samaritans accepted only the Pentateuch.

Even more divisive, the Samaritans had their own sanctuary on Mt. Gerazim, where sacrifice could be offered. In Judea, the Jerusalem Temple was the center containing the Holy of Holies, the only place where sacrifice could be offered. When Jesus placed a good Samaritan as the central hero of the parable, Jesus was challenging both prevailing racial/ethnic contempt and religious orthodoxy. Today the imagery might well be a PLO partisan coming to the aid of an Israeli.

There is another tradition preserved the the gospel called John (4-21/24) which illuminates again Jesus’ attitude toward any limitations on worship. Jesus is in Samaria and meets a Samaritan woman at a well. She says, “Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain; and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”

Jesus replied, “Neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father. But the hour cometh and now is, when the true worshiper shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.... God is a spirit, and they that worship him [must worship him] in spirit and in truth....”

To Jesus, the place of worship was unimportant. The spirit in which one worshiped was central.

Such a comprehensive, non-doctrinal attitude toward the meaning of worship represents a universalistic attitude, not only rare for that day, but also must have stirred his hearers either with anger or perhaps a wider view.

Consider also how Jesus made the law expert answer a different question than “Who is my neighbor?” After telling the parable, Jesus asked the expert, “which of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among thieves?” “He that showed mercy on him.” “Go thou and do likewise.” [CJW note: and Thoreau - “Men have a singular desire to be good without being good for anything.”]

The question was turned around – not who is my neighbor, but to whom can I show myself a neighbor? Not just the persons next door, or at the nearby desk or others we know, but to those in need whom we may not know but whose wounds or sorrows we see.

The black poet Countee Cullen understood this in his lines called, “Any Human to Another”

The ills I sorrow at
Not me alone
Like an arrow,
Pierce to the marrow,
Through the fat
And past the bone.

Your grief and mine
Must intertwine
Like sea and river,
Be fused and mingle,
Diverse yet single,
Forever and forever.

Let no man be so proud
And confident
To think he is allowed
A little tent
Pitched in a meadow
Of sun and shadow
All his little own.

Joy may be shy, unique,
Friendly to a few,
Sorrow never scorned to speak
To any who
Were false and true.

Your every grief
Like a blade
Shining and unsheathed
Must strike me down.
Of bitter aloes wreathed
My sorrow must be laid
On your head like a crown.

Sidney Harris, one of the wise persons of our time, wrote, “Religion at bottom is a matter of relationships. If you do not have a right relationship to others, you cannot have a right relationship with any god you may pray to regardless of doctrine or belief.”

Dr. Paul Pryser, a clinical psychiatrist, cites an old German poem, the spirit of which is that if there is the existence of one’s own spirit after the grave, “we shall have to account for the two great gifts with which we have been endowed: our Heart and our Reason. The author, concluding that our deeds and our attitudes will be decisive, concludes with these lines:

At last, when I shall rise up from
death’s deep grave
To stand before the world Judge,
face to face
He will judge all my deeds without
reprieve,
But my belief -
No, that I won’t believe.” (p. 257)

Such is the force of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. Leo Tolstoy once wrote, “To reinforce the teachings of Christ with miracles is like holding a candle in front of the sun to see it better.”

One thing more – where is our road between Jerusalem and Jericho? Where are the wounded we may help heal? Our roads are better policed than those in Jesus’ day. Our follow-through is more complex. We can, and many of us do, support causes that feed the hungry, heal the wounded and ill. Few of us individually will come upon someone who has been beaten up on Route 41, 301, or I-75, although we know it happens.

Who are the Samaritans? Jesus, in his parable, dealt with his own day. He was contemporaneous. He spoke to and about the despised and deprived of his own day.

Can we too be contemporaneous and still permit the power of this parable to pierce our prejudices? How broad is our vision? How deep our compassion? The whole world is more intertwined now than Jerusalem and Samaria were then. The issues are more complex now than those between Mt. Gerazim and the Temple in Jerusalem then. How shall I show myself a neighbor? And to whom?

Each of us can answer for himself or herself. The answers will differ. But the world is a neighborhood and Countee Cullen in his verse captured it -

Let no man be so proud
And confident
To think he is allowed
A little tent
Pitched in a meadow
Of sun and shadow
All his little own.