About the Creating Universe

October 17, 1965
Plainfield

Sermon Series: WHERE I NOW STAND
About the Creating Universe


Without cosmic dimensions, any faith is inadequate to fulfill the complete human personality. This I believe.

The earlier sections of this three-part sermon attempted to deal with the basic propositions that persons must deal with themselves and others in order to survive in any fashion that may be appropriately described as human. While I speak of the necessity to me of a cosmic dimension to religion, in all candor, many persons seem to do very well without any noticeable response. Wordsworth described this insensitivity:

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

The ancient Hebrew psalmist may have been overwhelmed with wonder, "When I consider they heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou has ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him?"....

But others seem unresponsive to Arcturus, Orion, the Pleiades, Moon and tide, the ever-bountiful Earth and the life-giving Sun.

However, there are those, arid I am one, who still feel the magnetic power of Wordsworth's immortal lines:

"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-gather'd 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 wreath'd horn."

Wordsworth, the Romantic, may seem archaic or naive to some of you, but he caught the essence of my present convictions about this mysterious, abundant Universe in which we live and of which we are a part. Religion is not only a way of feeling about oneself and a way of acting toward fellow human beings, but also religion is an attitude merging feeling and thought about the Universe. Man has always tried to solve the mysteries of creation and destiny; man has tried to accommodate himself to natural forces he understood only through a glass darkly. We still confront cosmic mystery. Whether one calls himself atheist, agnostic, a theist or humanist, if one relates to the cosmic order in some significant blend of thought and feeling, one is seeking a relationship that can be a thrilling and fulfilling religious experience.

The case I would set before you divides this way - (1) Man has tried always to understand, appease and control cosmic forces. (2) That although man has achieved fantastic scientific knowledge and mastered marvelous technologies, and although man has applied reason and become intellectually sophisticated, he still needs to wonder at the manifold ways and forces resident in the living Universe in which he lives and from which he has been created.

1. Early man - primitive man, we call him - lived dangerously. He was by no means master of wild beasts. The storm and sea could bring quick disaster; droughts and famine were not conditions to be corrected but rather supernatural forces beyond the control of man's bare hands and crude tools.

Primitive man believed the ferocity of the beasts and the catastrophic force of fire and storm, the wondrous gifts of light and fertility to have lives of their own - supernatural powers. Man tried to placate these powers through worship because man did not understand their nature. Religion was practical in that man offered sacrifice, prayer in word, gesture and ritual dance in order to obtain certain favors from these powers that inhabited inanimate things. Inasmuch as then and now men have a tendency to count the hits and not the misses, sometimes the sacrifice seemed to make a difference or the prayers seemed to be answered. Thus accidental or spontaneous efforts to please the gods tended to become habitual, ritualized.

It is not oversimplifying to assert that few ideas have changed form more frequently than man's idea of God or the gods.

In addition to worshiping the powers of light, fire, storm, fertility, man worshiped totem animals and eventually personified the gods in his (man's) ideal image.

Freud in his seminal work, "The Future of an Illusion," proposed that worship of gods or god was an escape mechanism wherein man, who had deep-seated and unconscious conflicts, created the image of the Father God in a strange blend of wish fulfillment and guilt.

The Marxist might say that the priests and ruling classes invented the gods as the best way to control the working classes - "religion was the opiate of the people."

Many of these theories are discredited or substantially qualified in the light of increasing knowledge. But new knowledge seldom wipes the chalkboard clean of outmoded beliefs. To be human is to possess not only the ability to transmit culture which has been tested and reasoned, but also to pass on out-moded beliefs and worship practices.

The humanistic philosopher, Morris Raphael Cohen, observed, "religious truth is absolute and its possession makes everything else unimportant. Hence, religion never preaches the duty of critical thought, of searching or investigating supposed facts.

"From this point of view, it is interesting to read the testimony of Bishop Colenso as to what led him to write his book on the Pentateuch. When he tried to teach Biblical history to the South African natives, he was amazed at obvious contradictions which these simple savages discovered in the various accounts of the Patriarchs. Yet millions of astute and learned Christians had not noticed these discrepancies." (Quoted in Kaufmann, RELIGION FROM TOLSTOY TO CAMUS.)

In early September, (9/6/65) the "National Observer" printed a feature article (by Lee Dirks) discussing the ways in which some churches are facing the conflict, tension and uncertainties in our world. Two of his observations seem accurate to me because they illustrate that while there may be general belief that there has been an advance from primitive religious practices, the progress may be more apparent than real:

"The Church worships a god but too often it is the false god of the status quo – the Church as it is, the community as it is, the world as it is...

"Church members too often consider God the great psychiatrist, a helpful resource to call upon in times of need but a convenient absentee at other times. The residential church thus runs a spiritual ambulance service, treating suffering when it arises, but rarely trying to influence the 'power structure' that might have caused the suffering."

I am not going to belabor the fifty-seven varieties of rationalizations which pass for devout belief. Think for a moment of the book of Job, the most superb delineation of the problem of reconciling human suffering with the idea of an all-good, all-powerful God.

The introduction to the dramatic scenes uses the device of a challenging argument between the Lord and Satan. The Lord boasts about the man, Job, "blameless and upright who fears God, who turns away from evil."

Satan rejoins, "Does Job fear God for nought? Hast thou not put a hedge about him and his house and all that he has on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hand and his possessions have increased in the land." Then Satan goes on to argue that if the Lord removed the hedge of prosperity and well-being, Job will curse "thee, God, to thy face."

The enduring value of the drama of Job derives from the self-searching and the spiritual agony and final existential resolution achieved by Job when the hedge is gone.

Our task is that of Job's – how to reconcile religion with life when the hedge is gone. The hedge is gone, for unlike some ideas of Job's time, good-fortune does not inevitably follow good behavior. The prayers of the just are not always answered. Furthermore, we are aware, or should be, of the extent to which the gods are images made by the mind of man, rather than vice-versa.

Can we like Job, remain reverent while unconvinced by false, irrational or outmoded ideas of God?

2. I can only offer my own testimony that this Universe, the force that resides in it and the constant creativity that seems to be its dominant characteristic cannot be dismissed as trivial, merely because other persons may cherish naive or wrong-headed ideas about origin and destiny.

The human personality has evolved to a state where not only are we self-conscious and conscious of others, but also the human personality, by way of the process we call by the name of consciousness, labors valiantly to find meaning in the totality of experience. This totality of experience encompasses more than self-consciousness and more than consciousness of others and the social order. The totality of experience also includes sensitivity to the swing of the seasons, to the ordered journey of the galaxies and an awareness of the bounty of the good Earth on which we depend for all the elements which combine to create our human life.

In my view, it is unnecessary to possess a closely-argued case for the existence of a God with particular characteristics. At issue in the present stage of astronomical discussion seem to be two theories of the origin of the Universe.

One is the "steady state" theory (Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold and others) which maintains that in the universe there are an infinite number of galaxies which have always existed. Theologically, this implies that the universe was never created, but has always existed.

The second theory is the "big bang" theory which asserts the universe was created when a primal atom exploded, its shattering parts creating the galaxies which began shooting outward at a pace of nearly the speed of light. According to this view, the stuff of the Universe is finite, rather than infinite, and theologically suggests an end as well as a beginning.

When dealing with religious consciousness, the point is not the correctness or truth of one of these theoretical cosmologies, but the reality, that as human beings we try to find meaning in the Universe. We seem to identify what we call "order" in the Universe. There are happenings regular enough in their repetitions that we call them natural laws. It seems to me irrelevant to argue that our human consciousness may be only harboring illusions of an orderly, lawful Universe. If it is an illusion, it is OUR illusion. As the eminent humanist, Sir Julian Huxley, wrote, "God is a hypothesis constructed by man to help him understand what existence is all about." (ESSAYS OF A HUMANIST, p. 221.)

So with hypothesis of "natural laws of the Universe," theologically, I classify myself as a "naturalist," because I believe man to be a natural, organic part of a natural order, a natural order which is larger and far more comprehensive than man. "Cosmic Humanist" might be a better phrase encompassing my beliefs, except it sounds pretentious and more positive than my feelings warrant. I shy away more and more from excessive and extensive use of the word "god" because too frequently when people speak of God it is either an immature fixation or a practical atheism which (quoting Rowlingson, Christian Century, 8/25/65, p. 35) "denies God's existence by ignoring Him except in meaningless lip service." Ralph Waldo Emerson perceived the difficulty when he wrote in his JOURNAL, (p. 73), "It is plain from all the noise that there is Atheism somewhere, the only question is now, which is the Atheist?"

Abraham Maslow in his little book of large impact (RELIGIOUS VALUES AND PEAK EXPERIENCES, p. 28 and 59) believes that "the essential core - religious experience may be embedded either in a theistic, supernatural context or in a nontheistic context."

Every one of us will do well to cultivate a natural reverence toward all that lives and all that touches our human experience, Many among us who believe in "one god at the most" agree with the late Nobel winner in literature, Albert Camus, when he wrote, "The difference as to whether a God exists involves our feelings more than most scientific disputes and in this respect is more like a difference as to whether there is beauty in a thing." (Quoted by Kaufmann, RELIGION FROM TOLSTOY TO CAMUS.)

But our feelings are as real as anything in our experience. While our evaluations of beauty may differ, beauty is one of the finer aspects of human experience. So it is with our experience of this marvelous universe. Knowledge has been acquired in fantastic quantities, but the magnificent mystery of creation deepens. The longer the radius, the greater the circumference and the longest radii of our knowledge draw but a small arc in the circumferential totality of the creating Universe.

There are recognitions which should generate both humility and reverence. The famous British astronomer, Sir Bernard Lovell, refers to a "close" star as one as "near" to the Earth as 4000 light years - we could travel to it in 4000 years if we were able to cross space at the rate of 186,000 miles per second.

Dr. David Goddard, a biologist, said that a single human sperm, weighing one billionth of a gram, contains more information coded into its microscopic size than all the information contained in all the libraries of all men in all times. (See THE URBAN CONDITION, Ian MacHarg, p. 55).

The late Norbert Wiener, prophet of cybernation, wrote in his little book, GOD AND GOLEM (p. 72), "any computer with powers comparable to the brain would have to occupy a fair-sized office building, if not a skyscraper."

In his new novel, LET ME COUNT THE WAYS, Peter DeVries has a character say, "the universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe."

We live in a universe of constant creativity. Greater marvel still – we are conscious of this cosmic creativity and cosmic mystery. As I see it, the essential reality question is not the usual one of deciding which variety of god operates and controls it, but rather recognizing that the Universe is not a chaotic void but an orderly cosmos. Huxley seized upon the core meaning: “Though gods and God in any meaningful sense seemed destined to disappear, the stuff of divinity out of which they have grown and developed remains. This religious raw material consists of those aspects of nature and experience
which are usually described as divine.... The term divine did not originally imply the existence of gods; on the contrary, gods were constructed to interpret man's experience of this quality." (p. 222 ESSAYS OP A HUMANIST.)

We are living beings who live because we are of the stuff of living Universe. The key word of it all is "life." The elements of the galaxies and this vital impulse we call life combine in rare harmony in us, granting us consciousness and physical growth. We are living beings who should be everlastingly grateful for the gift of life, while remaining confident that this gift of life must ever be valued as precious. Prom that basic value we infer other values which flow from it in harmonious procession. If man values friends, loves persons, and man permits his self-centeredness to be overmatched by outgoing sympathy, permits his neurotic vanity to become submerged by wide understanding of the human condition, and throughout it all embracing the regularities and mysteries of the totality of life experience, then no matter how he may state his faith in theological or nontheological jargon, he is close to the heart of things; and the unfolding of all experience will be for him the good life.

About Our Religious Society

October 10, 1965
Plainfield

Sermon Series: WHERE I NOW STAND
About Our Religious Society

All that I said about the integrity of individual belief would be deficient and ambiguous if I failed to come to grips with the reality that individuals encounter individuals and their honest convictions may collide rather than coincide. What then?

Last week I affirmed that the universe is dynamic, that man emerged through the process we call evolution because living organisms could adapt to ever-changing conditions. Today's part of this series is an attempt to deepen the meaning of individual integrity of belief by recognizing that no individual lives a solitary existence. We live in a social order – there is no other option except to extinguish life. How can individual integrity be retained and an effective social order maintained?

The institutions of society change much more slowly than an individual adjusts to new conditions. The necessity of "continued struggle to maintain a balance between change and order has been faced by all civilizations." (Moody Prior, PBK address.)

In an essay found in Leonard Duhl's THE URBAN CONDITION, (p. l4ff) John R. Seeley, then Chairman of the Department of Sociology of York University, believes two dominant themes have been major motifs characterizing Western history. "One theme virtually asserts that if each before his own door sweeps, the village will be clean; the other, that if the village institutes a proper sanitation service, each one will be clean – at least as far as his dooryard, and probably beyond. In dogmatic form these views are asserted not simply in terms of 'if, but in terms of 'if and only if' – i.e., a way becomes THE WAY. One formula runs roughly: good persons (or 'mature' or 'productive' or whatever new word for 'good' you want) make a good society, which inevitably makes a good physical ordering – or if not, it does not matter since virtue is its own sufficient reward. The other, obviously: a good physical ordering leads toward a great society, which produces (or educes) good persons – or if not, it does not matter since a good external order is a, perhaps, sufficient good in itself."

It might be possible to speak in general terms about the contradiction implicit in these two ways of life pulsing in our Western culture, but the context today is our kind of religious society – governed by the members in congregational meeting, using constitutional by-laws as the basic instrument for proper procedures. I am not asserting that such a religious society can be a proper model for the infinitely larger and more complex institutions of government, but I am saying that from the experience of the democratic religious society clues will be present and some wisdom gained which should give us. some insight into the crucial matter of whether or not self-government is an authentic hope or cruel delusion.

Without qualifying a single word said about the integrity of individual religious belief, I believe this, too – freedom even in the most democratically organized society is limited. My individual rights are limited by your individual rights. If we walk together, talk together, act together, we must accept common rules or laws which do place limits on our individualities. If we do not accept such limitations, in one way or another, society will impose them. The alternatives are anarchy and violence. Anarchy and violence always have the consequence of immediate destruction of the values which define freedom.

Therefore, we need the ordered society, because to grow properly in wisdom and righteousness, we must talk together, walk together and act together. A religious society of persons who voluntarily have subscribed to a constitutional instrument is necessary for our growth in freedom, our corporate wisdom and our effective application of the truths we believe.

There are many ways of affirming the values of a religious society such as ours. Let me suggest today – setting, structure, body, quality.

1. I believe the religious society to be the orderly setting of free expression for the congregation. When one wishes to temper metal, one exposes it to heat and pressure. There is no better way to discover whether one's ideas and convictions have been sufficiently tested than by exposure to facts and opinions expressed by someone else who may appraise issues differently.

There are many ways our Unitarian Universalist religion represents for us what religion is and does, but one of the distinctions we should never disavow is a respect for the growing edge of ideas. In no better way can ideas mature than by refinement in the free market of "challenge and response."

Dr. Nelson Glueck, President of Hebrew Union College and eminent archeologist, has written DEITIES AND DOLPHINS: THE STORY OF THE NABATAEANS (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux). The Nabataean kingdom flourished commerically, artistically and agriculturally in the Near East, from about 200 B.C. to 200 A.D., and was a crossroad of Mediterranean culture. Today, were it not for the excavations of the archeologist, we would know almost nothing of this vigorous kingdom.

According to Dr. Glueck, the Nabataeans did not persist and failed to influence history significantly because "they lacked the indestructible ideas of Greek philosophy, Roman law and Hebrew religion." The worship of the Nabataeans "was almost entirely limited to supplication for food and fortune in this world and the hereafter. It carried with it even in the midst of a brilliant period of efflorescence the irresistible causes of disintegration and disappearance." (See Saturday Review, p. 22, 9/4/65.)

The lesson seems clear; without a free market in ideas, any organization is headed for despotism or oblivion, irrespective of other virtues and assets. The religious society is no exception.

Not only is the free pulpit a necessary plank in the platform, but also the free pew. In the coffee hour, in the pulpit when the minister vacates it, in the committee work and in the program meetings, our religious society must not falter in expressing ideas and convictions and must not build any walls, psychological or organizational, that will shut out the creative rhythm of differing opinions expressed openly and with affection. The most important setting is, of course, the society in official meeting, but without a prevailing climate of openness whenever we gather informally, then there will be difficulty maintaining free expression and good will amid the formalities of "Robert's Rules of Order."

2. I believe the democratic religious society to be a structure of discernment. When there is no discrimination between the important and the trivial, the enduring and the transient, all the traffic in ideas is like unto the chaff which the wind blows away.
The eminent historian, Henry Steele Commager, (in article "Historian Looks at Political Morality," Saturday Review, 7/10/65) noted, "The students of my college celebrate Lord Jeffrey Amherst on all ceremonial occasions, but few of them remember that Lord Amherst's solution to the Indian problem was to send them blankets infected with smallpox." One might call this celebration without discernment.

That was illustration, for I have no desire to single out one institution where values were not clearly perceived, for there are no exceptions to the rule that every society needs more acute perception as well as free expression.

What do persons value most? What issues deserve priority in attention and decision? Does the leadership, whether the professional leadership or the elected lay leadership, correctly interpret the members' convictions and their dominant feelings about change and the order of change?

Dr. Dexter Perkins, famous Rochesterian, historian, one-time Moderator of the A.U.A., in his brief historical study, THE NEW AGE OF FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT, (p. 110) wrote about the sense of peril Americans felt in the late 1930's about the collapse of the European democracies. There was increasing feeling in the U.S. that vigorous action was necessary, even at the risk of war. According to Dr. Perkins, William Allen White, long-time Republican, admonished President Roosevelt, "As an old friend, let me tell you that you may not be able to lead the American people unless you catch up with them."

There is a legend, probably unhistorical, but pertinent, about the agitated man in a revolution, anxiously asking spectators, "where did the crowd go? I am their leader."

Persons gathered in religious society, or any society, must perceive as well as express and must evaluate as well as expostulate. The method and consequence of such an appraising process is just as essential to the moral growth of a society as it is to an individual. I believe it our obligation to increase the ways we may perceive and evaluate the ideas and issues which stake a claim on our interest.

3. Next I believe that the effective range of our religious society reaches beyond expression and discernment. At its best the Unitarian Universalist religious society is a body of decision and a proper instrument of change.

In Sophocles' immortal drama, ANTIGONE, Creon, the dictator, says, "I guard the city's greatness." In our kind of society, the leadership we do not want is a dictator to guard any greatness we may have or to which we aspire. The body of decision is the members gathered. They must guard the tradition and innovate the necessary changes to keep purpose alive and action effective. The most difficult and responsible task of the membership is to maintain the balance between what has been and what should be.

In a famous line, the Rev. Mr. Thwackum in TOM JONES asserted, "When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England." Such narrow parochialism is not for us, but temptations facing us, while not as obvious, may be enticing. For example, John Haynes Holmes wrote in his autobiography, I SPEAK FOR MYSELF, an impression of his first pastorate, Third Unitarian Church of Dorchester, Massachusetts, that it was "exactly like its neighbors, adapted to traditions rather than prospects."

Last week I suggested to you that "each of us is a seeker of religious truth – we should feel committed to a perpetual process of searching out better expressions of faith which embody both deeper perception and a broader embrace of the new knowledge constantly flowing from the sciences and the humanities." This statement is just as relevant to our group ways as well as to our individual integrity. One of my colleagues (Wallace Fiske) once wrote, "some people fall out of church life for the same reason the little girl fell out of bed – she went to sleep too near the place she got in."

In professing to be a body of decision and the proper instrument of change, a vital virtue of our religious society is not only that it is the way of group religious life most consistent with a free faith, but also it is an immediate and practical test of the democratic ways we profess. At its best, our religious society is an integrated community whose members assert, listen, consult, strive for authentic concensus and then express the will of the members by vote.

Isaiah, most poetic of the Hebrew prophets of old, had appropriate words: "Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former things shall not be remembered, nor come to mind. But be ye glad and rejoice forever in that which I create...."

Note that Isaiah challenges persons to rejoice in the things which are created, not which have been created. The past can neither be ignored nor erased; but vital to a Unitarianism and a Universalism which will carry both the better sanctions of the past and a confrontation of the present in a continuous reconstruction by interweaving old wisdom with new experience.

4. One thing more is needed. I believe our religious society, when it is at its best, possesses a quality of fellowship which laces together freedom, discernment and decision in good will and affection. Eddie Dunn, the Rochester radioman, told a story which may illustrate. A teacher, disturbed about noise and chatter in class, said, "I want the persons to stand on their feet who are responsible for doing all the talking and preventing the students from learning." There was a long pause, then one student stood up. Teacher: "At least there's one honest student among you. I'd like to hear what you have to say." "Well, teacher, I didn't think you should be standing there alone:, so I decided to join you."

We join each other as well as joining a society. A character, a quality of feeling, creates our fellowship as well as a proper set of by-laws. Josiah Royce, Harvard philosopher, whose teaching life overlapped the 19th and 20th Centuries, developed a theory about early Christianity which may possess an insight for later times and different conditions. Royce believed that an unappreciated emphasis of Paul and the other early Christians was loyalty to a community. Royce wrote, (PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY, p. 158), "But apart from Paul's religious faith, the perfectly human truth remains that loyalty (which is the love of a community) loyalty – the devotion of self to the cause of community – is the only cure for the natural warfare of the collective and individual will."

The difficulties of differing convictions should never be ignored. (In our kind of society we could not ignore them if we would.) We reject with loathing the involuntary extinction of the individual for the sake of a cause, even a good cause. Without feeling for others a society becomes a cold collectivity. In THE PALL, Albert Camus has his central character say, "Your success and happiness are forgiven you only if you generally consent to share them."

How shall I sum up what I believe about the society which is the framework for free expression, discernment, decision and a precious quality of fellowship? An old African proverb suggests a summary in six words, "No hand can wash itself properly."

In the beginning I spoke of two dominant and contradictory ideas: On the one hand, that "if each before his own door sweeps, the village will be clean." On the other, "that if the village institutes a proper sanitation service, each one will be clean, at least as far as his own dooryard."

Neither position deserves to be cherished as an ultimate and unshakeable foundation for beliefs. Life is never so simple as to permit easy dogmatisms or glib generalities.

Whenever the integrity of individual belief requires it, one must check out of a society, but this is an option persons should be reluctant to choose. When persons congregate in an open society with a constitutional instrument, and are dedicated both to discernment and character, no matter what else may happen, the opportunity always remains to cherish human dignity by supporting it in freedom and fellowship.

On the Integrity of Individual Belief

October 3, 1965

Sermon Series: WHERE I NOW STAND

On the Integrity of Individual Belief
Plainfield

As I begin my ministry with you, it seems important to me to attempt to disclose and elaborate the foundations of my belief – the way I see religion. After this initial three-part series, there will be ample opportunity to discuss particular issues and various crises. But the specific convictions I may affirm from time to time are inferred from the basic assumptions I hold. I believe that explicit particularities should be implicit in generalities. Furthermore, many of the observations are attempts to answer more adequately questions asked me during that busy week in June. You will note that the general title of this series is, "This is Where I NOW Stand." It is basic that my conclusions are tentative only. I hope I shall grow in wisdom and perception among you – for if I am to have a fruitful ministry here, then our relationship will be characterized by mutual growth and increasing understanding. Each Sunday's section must stand by itself, but any comprehensive judgment on my present beliefs as a Unitarian Universalist minister should consider not only today's statement about man and himself, but also the succeeding statements about man and man, and man and the Universe.

Introduction

"A fool can put on his own clothes better than a wise man can do it for him." This was a saying that a U.S. Public Health Officer kept in his desk drawer for frequent reflection. (Quoted by Jane Jacobs, DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES.)

"A fool can put on his own clothes better than a wise man can do it for him." In this Unitarian Church and in our Unitarian Universalist societies generally, a basic justification for our corporate religious existence pivots on the prime assumption that every person has the right of individual belief. This foundation assumption prevails because the dignity and worth of every person are values on which we must agree. We can and do disagree in differing measure and varying intensity on the nature of specific issues and the merit of various proposals. But this I believe – the integrity of individual belief must continue to be vital among the values we promote and defend.

(1) First of all, this claim for the integrity of individual belief is based on the reality that experience precedes interpretation. If individual religious experience is to be understood, one must not rely only on theological interpretations made after the experience itself. Many sensitive mystics have testified to the awesome and shattering nature of personal religious experience. Moses and the burning bush, Elijah on the mountain, Jesus in the wilderness, Muslem dervishes in ecstatic dance, Hindu holy men in absolute concentration – all these human religious expressions are varieties of religious experience. In every case these basic experiences are interpreted in the framework of the beliefs held by the individual. A Roman Catholic will encounter religious experience and interpret it as a revelation of the Triune God or the Atonement of Jesus. An Islamic Sufi may experience similar inward rapture and interpret according to Allah - One God, not Three. A non-theistic mystic will interpret the experience in non-theistic recollection. For those of us who cannot believe that certain persons have been selected as divinely chosen channels for the revelation of specific eternal truths, the only reasonable conclusion is to accept what should be obvious – that experience precedes interpretation. Interpretation necessarily and inevitably is organized in the framework of particular religious premises and particular religious culture.

When religious experience is scanned historically in time, or currently across the world, there is no escaping the elementary reality that religion is expressed in countless and variegated interpretations.

In the light of our premise about the worth of persons, we should feel an obligation to respect the honest reverence of another person or group. But respect for the sincere convictions of others does not mean that their beliefs are true or useful for us. To respect the beliefs of others while candidly disagreeing with them is a virtue that many of us should cultivate more than we do.

(2) When a Unitarian attempts to practice this, he should have a reason for the dissenting faith he holds. Secondly, then, I believe that integrity of individual belief requires that we affirm positively that the "old time religion" is not good enough for us because we live in the new dimensions of the 20th Century. Religion, too, must measure up to standards of increased knowledge, more perceptive understanding and sterner, more complex ethical demands.

Most persons who participate in the standard branches of Christianity, or most other world religions, base their faith on a holy man who is believed to have revealed God's truth; or a divine Book, believed to have been supernaturally inspired to reveal God's truth without error; or an authoritative Church, supernaturally given power to reveal correct dogma and perform redeeming sacraments. But you are here because you question, cannot accept, or have rebelled against these ancient ways of irrational religious authority. We have reason to believe that dogmatic religion many times held with excessive self-righteousness is not necessarily a virtue, even though we may respect the zeal of the believer. Unitarians and Universalists would concur with that courageous old dissenter, John Milton, when he wrote in Areopagitica: "A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believes things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determine, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy."

In my view, integrity in religious belief requires critical thought as well as enthusiasm, investigation of facts as well as nostalgic embrace of tradition for its own sake.

Religious truths are not sudden, magic revelations, but have origins and evolution. Outmoded doctrines and irrelevant teachings are not the fantasies of heretics. Religion, like an ancient delta, silts up with the sediments of many ancient streams. If one wants to remain tied up at the pier, there may be no problem; but if one wants to navigate toward some port of call, the silt must be dredged away. Most of us are Unitarians because we see no reason in the doctrines of the trinity, virgin birth, sacrificial atonement, physical resurrection, etc., and feel no need for these old deposits from an antique source.

We seek new ways of prayer or, for example, meditation, because there is no reason, or for that matter, justice, in begging gifts from God who might neglect us were it not for our persistent reminders. The story was told by the late Erwin Goodenough of Yale that the late Knute Rockne, famous football coach of Notre Dame used to say apropos of the pre-game prayers of the team, "the prayers work better when the players are big."

Our individual differences create certain levels of tension within a Unitarian or Universalist congregation, as well as when confronting the neighborhood and the city. Christopher Fry's play about Moses some years ago deals with the conflict arising between sincere persons, each of whom believes himself to be right. The legend of the Exodus tells how the first-born of the Egyptians were stricken by the plague, but the children of Israel were spared. In the play the plague brings death to young Rameses. Moses, because he had been reared in an Egyptian family and culture, is disturbed for he has some loyalty and affection still for Egypt. As he is about to leave on the Exodus, he says, "Death and life are moving to a call. I turn from Egypt." Anath (who discovered him) asks, "What is left to call to me?" Moses answers, "The morning which still comes to Egypt and Israel, the round of lights which will not wheel in vain. We must each find our separate meaning in the persuasion of our days until we meet in the meaning of the world. Until that time."

So with us and the nostalgia that comes upon us when the teaching of new occasions separates us from what once was valuable and dear.

We have rejected many dogmas and doctrines because they have been shown to be false or outmoded in the constant light of ever-expanding knowledge and the searching rays of reason. But reason should not be our God. The French revolutionists crowned a beautiful actress as the "Goddess of Reason" in Notre Dame Cathedral. This was as wrong-headed as any other idolatry. Reason is not an idol to be worshiped, but an intellectual tool we should keep sharp and ready.

(3) But right here an important qualification must be made if we are to be true to the basic premise of the individual worth and dignity of every human being. It is well, just and honorable to hold that we must "each find our own separate meaning in the persuasion of our days," but we have an obligation not only to disavow but to condemn ideas, religious or political, which denigrate human dignity or injure human personality.

Sir Julian Huxley wrote, (ESSAYS OF A HUMANIST, p. 50) about the belief of the Aztecs that the sacrifice of human beings every day was necessary to ensure that the sun should continue to rise each day. In order to maintain the supply of sacrificial victims, more and more prisoners were taken from neighboring tribes. As a consequence, these neighboring tribes sided with Cortez when he invaded Mexico. Thus the Aztec's beliefs not only were a savage denial of human dignity, but also contributed greatly to the final Aztec downfall.

But we need not dig into early Central American history to make the point that some false beliefs injure human dignity. One of the dishonorable pages in Christian religion was maintained in the South and elsewhere that human slavery was divinely ordained and authorized by scripture. This base attitude has continued in various forms, some more polite, but the damage has been cruel and pervasive.

Just in the last few years there have been about fifty persons murdered because they spoke for and worked for civil rights and equal opportunity. I do not know of one murder or assault for which anybody has been convicted.

In August my colleague in the UU Ministry, Donald Thompson, minister of the First Unitarian Church, Jackson, Mississippi, was shot in the back by a shotgun blast and although he has made satisfactory improvement, still lies seriously wounded in the Baptist Hospital in Jackson, Mississippi. Why was he shot in the back? – because he believed in and worked for equal opportunity for all persons. A few days before the murder attempt on Don Thompson, an Episcopal Theological student was foully murdered and a Roman Catholic priest badly wounded. A jury has just acquitted the accused murderer of Jonathan Daniels in a courtroom spectacle that was a travesty of justice. The question now is relevant, what must be done to ensure that justice and law prevail in fact?

None of us should be tolerant of murderous actions and continued misery created and maintained by cruel discrimination under any guise of "tolerance" of ideas or any subterfuge labeled "patience."

We may maintain the individual integrity of our separate beliefs and convictions, but neither supposed "tolerance" or alleged "diversity" can justify outrages visited upon human persons, everyone of whom is of individual worth. And if we forget that, may our movement lose its strength.

(4) One thing more – because experience precedes interpretation and revised knowledge creates enlarged understanding, we should be careful that our present Unitarian Universalist belief does not harden into dogma. Our beliefs too must be held tentatively. We have an obligation to try ever to find new and better ways to understand and define the faith that is ours. I ran across an item that may illustrate. The famous publisher of the "little blue books," which those in my generation may remember, Haldemann-Julius, once published a short biography of Henry VIII which sold only 5000 copies. However, when the shrewd publisher published a second edition, without altering a single line of the text, he sold 300,000 copies. The difference was that he changed the title in the second edition to "The Story of a Lustful King." (See item, "New Republic.")

Now I am not an advocate of a more erotic "sell" for our Unitarian beliefs. But I am persuaded that to be true to the genius of our faith, that is, each of us is a responsible seeker of truth, we should feel committed to a perpetual process of searching out better expressions of faith which embody both deeper perception and a broader embrace of the new knowledge constantly flowing from the sciences and the humanities. Our religious experience is conditioned by our human experience in a technologically fantastic and politically perilous world.

The merit of tentative conclusions is grounded in the nature of man. Man's evolutionary process is one of constant adaptation and creative selection of unending options of belief and action. In a notable Phi Beta Kappa address, Moody Prior, Professor of English at the graduate school of Northwestern, said, "The problem of the human race and therefore of all human societies is continuous adaptation to changes in the conditions of life, both those which are imposed from the outside and those which man brings upon himself by virtue of being a creative animal....

"Francis Bacon expressed the essence of (our attitude) when he wrote, 'he that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator, and if time of course alters things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?'"

Therefore we Unitarians ought to put to rest the clever but shallow criticism that we are negative – that we "disbelieve everything anyone else believes and have a strong sustaining faith in we don't know quite what;" or to repeat another saying that is going around about the pilot who called the control tower, "I'm lost, but I'm making record time." Such critical barbs are sharp but inaccurate.

The premise that new conditions require new appraisals and modified responses, far from being "negative," is positive because creative change is the very stuff of life itself. Erwin Goodenough said it well, writing specifically of the agnostic, "What the agnostic wants is to find out a little more than he knows now, and this the man who really thinks that he has the final answer cannot. Far from being a negative position, it is the greatest positive stimulus man has." (PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION, p. 182.)

To summarize: I believe that the integrity of individual belief requires that 1) I recognize that for all persons experience precedes interpretation. Therefore, I am obligated to cultivate a respect for the experience of reverence even when I reject particular interpretations. 2) Because knowledge increases and the opportunity is always here for enlarged understanding, I am obligated to try to use reason as a tool in understanding persons and events. 3) But however much I may respect another's reverence, if his ideas are an offense to human worth and his actions are injurious to persons, I can be true only by disavowing such ideas and resisting such action. 4) The merit of holding conclusions tentatively is the keystone in the arch of creative belief.

Next week I shall devote the second section of this three-part sermon to the nature and values involved in man's relationship to man, with particular application to our religious society, but let me conclude today with a reminder that as far as an individual is concerned, full integrity is maintained when one discovers in his own experience that the truth he believes is actable.

John Mason Brown, the drama critic in his biography of Robert Sherwood, the American playwright, said of Sherwood, "He was a delegate at large for the American conscience."

Few there are who merit such a significant description. But whether the ripple of our influence is narrowly circumscribed or has far reaching boundaries, if our beliefs and values are deeply held, then we will be delegates for those values in the world we encounter. One cannot predict success, popularity or acceptance; one can only make the effort. Mrs. John F. Kennedy, speaking of her late husband, said, “He believed that one man can make a difference and that every man should try.”