A Wall Street Journal cartoon shows a minister in the pulpit preaching, "In compliance with federal full-disclosure laws, I'm required to tell you that I'm really not sure about any of this stuff." As Unitarian Universalists we also believe in full disclosure - honesty and truthfulness in religion, no matter what, a particularly apt value to consider when we seek to build interfaith cooperation.
In the last few months I have had two very different experiences that demonstrate both the joy and the difficulty of being a Unitarian Universalist. On January 16th I hosted 20 members of Rochester's Interfaith Forum, a representative gathering of the major faith groups in our community, in our Susan B. Anthony Lounge. Our program was, "Why Am I What I Am?" We invited each person to share a personal faith perspective - why are you what you are religiously? It was a rich experience.
There, in the ambiance of our world religion banners and under the thoughtful gaze of Susan B. Anthony, Muslim and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Quaker and Buddhist, charismatic Christian and Unitarian Universalist, shared their deepest convictions. The atmosphere was so prayerful that as we finished I could only utter a single word, "Amen." It was a moment suspended in time, when the theological planets of our religious solar system were in alignment - each with its own beauty, and yet part of the whole.
One of the classic formulations of our faith is a liberal religious trinity - freedom, reason and tolerance: Freedom from religious authority; the use of reason in religion; and tolerance for the views of others. However, at times this freedom leads us to arrogance, our reason makes us exclusive, and we become intolerant of those who have not seen the light of the flaming chalice as have we.
I re-learned this on a cold winter's evening this year during a Building Your Own Theology session. We quite accidentally encountered what I consider the Achilles heal of the Unitarian Universalist - religious arrogance. We were sharing our ethical ten commandments and easy agreement was in the air. Discussion was going too smoothly, I thought, and so, ever the agent provocateur, I decided to be deliberately disturbing. I brought up the intolerance of the religious left.
There are times when enthusiasm for our own faith gets the better of us and we are guilty of liberal dogmatism. My favorite illustration is the apocryphal tale of the Unitarian Universalist who said he would believe anything so long as it was not in the Bible. This represents what has been called a "flat earth humanism."
This hint of liberal religious intolerance created a mini firestorm in our group, and we spent the rest of our session discussing it. It seems we had found a major flaw in our proud liberal faith - our tendency to think that in the words of one sage, having become Unitarian Universalists, there was nothing left to do, that we had found IT - whatever IT may be.
We do seem sometimes to forget that we are a self-critical and self-correcting faith. And so we shared examples of our own failures to fully respect the faith of others who did not share our views. I am as guilty of that as any and have been properly chastised for some unkind comment about the Christian Coalition; I remember vividly an OP-ED piece, critical of Israeli policy, which deeply upset some of my Jewish friends. A two-year interfaith dialogue ensued, until we had healed the wounds. Sometimes in drawing distinctions between our approach and others, I have not been respectful.
It was a good - and even therapeutic - discussion in that BYOT class. We concluded that we have many miles to go before we sleep, content in the knowledge we have lived out our values.
Two very different experiences - one the epitome of genuine respect; the other suggesting an occasional lack thereof; one leading to deeper relationships; the other for a time threatening the harmony of the group; one seeking new perspectives on truth; the other entrenched in a liberal dogmatism about who has a monopoly on the truth.
Freedom, reason and tolerance - that old Unitarian Universalist trinity - needs some updating. Freedom implies responsibility; reason needs sensitivity; and tolerance requires respect.
I find a substantial difference between tolerance and respect. Tolerance implies that I will allow you to practice your faith even though I am quite confident it is misguided. It places me on a step above the one tolerated. It suggests that I have found the truth, and that perhaps you will someday too. I will not in any way interfere with your right to your beliefs, but only because that would not be tolerant.
Respect, on the other hand, is not condescending. Respect implies a genuine regard for others and their faith perspective. It does not suggest that I am right and you are wrong; rather that we have two defensible ways of looking at religious reality. It makes real dialogue possible. That was what happened at the Interfaith Forum meeting to which I have alluded.
This mutual respect also happened one night at the Rochester Friends Meeting House as I and four other pro-choice activists engaged in the Claremont Dialogue with an equal number of people from Christians for Life, a "pro-life" group. We sat in a circle and had a structured dialogue, alternating participants as each shared a personal perspective. We had to make "I" statements "owning" what we said; we were not allowed to comment on our counterparts. While nothing came of the evening politically, I came to a new respect for those with whom I differ on abortion rights.
On yet another occasion with the Interfaith Forum we followed the same Claremont Dialogue approach - let by a Quaker - in the Islamic Center - discussing the issue of physician-aid-in dying. If we cannot dialogue about controversial matters of conscience, then our interfaith cooperation is shallow.
Poet Phylis McGinley catches up some of the dilemma of being a religious liberal in a conservative time, in her "Lament for a Wavering Viewpoint." She indicates how hard it is to be a liberal - liberal in its basic sense of generosity of spirit:
"I want to be a Tory and with the Tories stand,
Elect and bound for glory with a proud, congenial band.
Or in the Leftish hallways I gladly would abide,
But from my youth I always could see the Other Side.
How comfortable to rest with the safe and armored folk
Congenitally blessed with opinions stout as oak.
Assured that every question one single answer hath,
They keep a good digestion and whistle in their bath.
But all my views are plastic, with neither form nor pride.
They stretched like new elastic around the Other Side;
And I grow lean and haggard with searching out the taint
Of hero in the (Devil) or Villain in the saint.
Ah, snug lie those that slumber beneath Conviction's roof.
Their floors are sturdy lumber, their windows weatherproof.
But I sleep cold forever and cold sleep all my kind,
Born nakedly to shiver in the draft of an open mind."
McGinley spells out, by extrapolation, how hard it is to be a Unitarian Universalist. Dependent on one's own religious bearings, it is excruciatingly difficult to come to terms with life's ambiguities.
A funny thing about the truth which all religions seek. Even if there is absolute truth, it is so hard to know whether or not we have found it.
Liberal religion insists we trust our own experience. We can - and should - learn from all traditions in all times. Ultimately, however, we must formulate our faith out of the raw material of our own experience. Furthermore, we insist on doing this work in a religious community of souls who are seekers with us. Together we are so much more than we are alone.
We would affirm the wisdom of the Chinese ideograph for belief, which is two people talking - be they talking within a faith community or across faith lines.
However, there are inherent dangers in this openness. As has been said, "The trouble with being open-minded is that your brains may fall out or a draft may blow through."
Ogden Nash catches up that danger in his inimitable verse, "Yes and No," concluding,
"Sometimes with secret pride I sigh
To think how tolerant am I;
Then wonder what is really mine;
Tolerance or a rubber spine."
The fundamental problem for Unitarian Universalists, then, is this: how do we cultivate a basic religious humility before the ultimate questions of life, fully respect other religious perspectives, and at the same time maintain a strong enough faith to get us through the day - to get us through a life? While it is possible to be certain of too much, are we certain of too little?
I go back to my experience with the Interfaith Forum. Each of us was able to confess our faith with conviction and yet with respect for the equally strong convictions of others. Of course, I disagreed with much of what was said, but I respect both the integrity of those who spoke and even beliefs with which I must disagree.
I am bound to proclaim what I believe to be true and hope that my life will demonstrate the validity of those convictions, at least for me. Perhaps you will be persuaded to join me - perhaps not. In any case, let us respect one another.
My own ability to be respectful of others while strongly proclaiming my own values was sorely tested not long ago by columnist George Will. While I often disagree with Will, I thought him the thinking man’s conservative until his Newsweek column on "political Unitarianism," which he defined as "mild and inoffensive...the belief that there is at most one God...a salad bar."
If he had written this of Judaism, he would stand accused of anti-Semitism. Apparently slighting Unitarianism (he forgot Universalism) was all right. It was a cheap shot. And so I wrote Newsweek, rhetorically asking Will,
"Was it merely mild and inoffensive that Michael Servetus was put to the stake by John Calvin for his unitarianism? Was Unitarian Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence simply bland? Does Will find a salad bar faith in the Florida Unitarian murdered at an abortion clinic defending a woman’s right to choose? Is it religiously wimpy to struggle for one’s own faith? It is weak-kneed to take seriously the Constitution’s call for government to "promote the common welfare"? Doesn't Will find ostentatious wealth and abject poverty side by side to be offensive?
In Will's harsh critique of liberalism, he said, "As a summons to the barricades, that needs work." I suggested that perhaps it was he who needed work - in respect, honesty and humility.
If we met, I would tell George I believe that Heaven - mythologically speaking - is not populated by true believers. I doubt God really wants as neighbor any people who thinks he or she knows it all. I think of two cartoon pictures - one is of Hell where the incumbents are gorging themselves on a magnificent feast. In Heaven God and one solitary human figure are dining together, eating a tuna sandwich.
The caption under the second picture: "It's not worth cooking for two."
And so I have tried to make a case for religious humility. We Unitarian Universalists are theists and humanists, Christians and pagans, pantheists and agnostics. Uniformity of belief has never marked us.
What has characterized us at out best is a sense of humility before the cosmos and its meaning for us. No one of us is privy to ultimate knowledge. No one of us can know the inner lives of others and how they have come to believe as they do. And so we continue the journey, respectful of our companions, even as we proclaim to them the truth we would claim.
Like the Wall Street Journal cartoon preacher, there are a good many things I'm not sure about, but about my own convictions, the need to respect those of others, and the imperative to be humble before the universe, of this I am sure enough to bet my life. And I do so gladly, day after day.
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