First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Once while I was serving the church in Chattanooga, the Rev. John Buehrens, then the President of the Unitarian Universalist Association visited and was our guest speaker. During the Sunday Morning Adult Forum after the service, a member of the church challenged him about the future of humanism within our movement. His reply is worth remembering; he said that humanism was now, and would always be, the foundation of all other theological positions within Unitarian Universalism. He went to elaborate that unless a spirituality embraced the inherent worth and dignity of every person, the value of reason, science, and the intellect, and the use of the democratic process (humanist positions all), that it would not fit with Unitarian Universalism. But, John added, humanism itself is evolving, and there must be room in our movement for those whose theology cannot be completely encompassed by the term “humanism.”
Now, I’m from here in Louisiana, where as you know politics is a spectator sport and a cherished form of entertainment, and I know a good politician’s answer when I hear one. John Buehren’s reply was a very careful yes-but-also-no. It happens, however, that I agree with his assessment, and I suppose it is the job of this sermon to explain to you why I believe that all of us UUs are also all of us Humanists.
Both Unitarianism and Universalism began as courageous heresies of orthodox Christianity, heresies that never denied the worth and value of Jesus’s teachings and message, but that did disagree profoundly with doctrines about the nature and person of Jesus. And the whole time these courageous religious liberals staked a claim to the name “Christian” -- even while denying Jesus was God and questioning the miracles and the bodily resurrection. This willingness to question and make our own religious decisions led later in the 19th century to an acceptance of the truths to be found in all the world’s religions, and to the Divine that could be found in nature. These understandings led further to the development of religious humanism among us in the early 20th century, which brought us to courageous stands on civil and religious rights for people of color in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and for women, and gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered persons in the ‘70s and ‘80s. And all the while, as we grew and changed and gained new revelations from new experiences, we never abandoned our spiritual roots.
UUA records indicate that even when humanism was in its heyday, it was never was the sole theological viewpoint in all our churches. By 1996, in an in-formal poll done by the Department of Ministerial Settlement, even the most traditionally humanist UU congregations admitted that their newer members were describing themselves as mystical humanists or Christian humanists, or using some other modifier. The “Fulfilling The Promise” survey done by the UUA at the end of the 1990s found that for the first time in a generation, what you might call “plain vanilla” humanists made up less than half of the respondents, although it remained the top faith position. (For those of you who like numbers, the breakdown was humanism 46.1%, pagan 19%, theist 13%, Christian 9.5%. The other 12.4% were spread among various minority positions and “not sure.” The reason it doesn’t all add up to 100% is that so many UUs were checking more than one option. )
In the Cherry Hill, NJ congregation, where I served before coming home to Louisiana in 2007, surveys of members in preparation for ministerial searches over the years showed a clear shift, with fewer people each time saying that God was completely irrelevant and that theological language made them uncomfortable. But still, it should be noted, in that congregation as in Unitarian Universalism as a whole, humanism of whatever stripe remained the majority. As Department of Ministry chair John Weston wrote at the start of the 21st century, “The humanist tradition is the common currency of our movement. If there is an ideological center to this movement, it lies there.”
Say the word “humanism” and the reactions you receive will depend on who’s listening. If your listeners are fundamentalist conservative Christians, you may get looks of horror. If you are in academia, you will get a polite reception. If you are inside one of the “temples” of UU humanism, you will get warm regard. If you are talking to a UU pagan or a UU Christian or a UU Buddhist who has felt shut out or belittled by staunch humanists in their churches, you may hear a litany of complaint.
Well, I can’t do much about the reactions from fundamentalist Christians, but I have a lot to say about what happens within Unitarian Universalist congre-gations. One of the things I am here to say is, Lay down your rhetorical battle weapons. We are not on different sides; in fact, we are all on the same side, and the sooner we realize it, the better for all of us, and for religious liberalism.
The fact is, all of us are humanists. Here in the United States, the govern-ment that was founded in the aftermath of the American Revolution was based in classical humanist understandings from the Renaissance; the word “senator” was taken from ancient Greece and Rome, which for our country’s founders were paradigms of civilization and culture. To the extent that we support representative democracy, it might be said that all Americans -- even the conservative Christians! -- participate in classical humanism.
I was raised as a humanist, although that word was never spoken in our house that I can recall. But I do remember asking my father why he first got involved in the organized labor and Civil Rights movements. He answered thoughtfully, “Because I just couldn’t stand the way they treated people.” Sounds humanist to me.
Almost all Unitarian Universalist Christians are basically Christian humanists. Christian humanism also developed during the Renaissance, and de-emphasized dogma and creeds, holding to an idea of a tolerant and loving God. These Christians taught that Jesus’s great gift to humanity was NOT his blood sacrifice but his moral example, his way of life to be followed, and that he was not a fully divine figure to be adored and worshiped. Sounds humanist to me.
Another kind of humanism is cultural, and I dare say there are few people in- or outside UU churches who disagree with it -- indeed, social conservatives are among those who are vociferously in favor of it. Cultural humanism is the core curriculum of any college or university worth the name: philosophy, art, music, language, and science. Although there have been inroads on the understanding of what ought to make up a liberal arts education, most universities still require a core load in these subjects -- even if they sometimes seem to apologize for doing so. The idea is that there are certain subjects that every person ought to receive a basic education in -- sounds humanist to me.
Religious humanism is, of course, the category into which Unitarian Uni-versalist humanists fall. Religious humanism takes a position against supernat-uralism, recognizes the value of scientific insights, and holds that orthodox religion can learn a lot from the understandings of the modern world. A religious humanist can be agnostic or atheist, or can even hold to what seminaries might call a “naturalistic theism” -- believing in what Ralph Waldo Emerson termed “the God of nature.” By the way, if you attend services at a congregation, you are by definition a religious humanist, because a secular humanist does not go to or belong to a church!
It is no accident that so many of the signers of the original Humanist Manifesto were Jewish, for Judaism is, like Unitarian Universalism, a creedless faith that is centered on behavior instead of belief. The message of the Hebrew Scriptures -- the Torah, the Talmud, the Mishnah, and all the rest -- can be summed up with the question, “How are you treating your fellow human beings?” Sounds humanist to me.
Buddhism is also in its essence a very humanist religion. It does not require belief in a Supreme Being, and is centered on human actions and relationships. Mahayana Buddhism requires of its adherents lovingkindness to all living creatures, and Zen focuses the mind of the practitioner on the present moment -- all that we know for sure that we have. Sounds humanist to me.
I contend, along with many other UU thinkers and theologians, that nearly ALL current-day Unitarian Universalists are religious humanists of one form or another. It’s just that, as John Buehrens told the Chattanooga congregation, humanism is evolving, and there are now many different ways to be a religious humanist. Today, there are atheist humanists, agnostic humanists, Christian humanists, Jewish humanists, Buddhist humanists, pagan humanists, mystical humanists, and so on.
Back in the 19th century, psychologist William James met a famous sage from India. The sage told him that in the Hindu worldview, the universe rests on the backs of 8 celestial white elephants. “What do those elephants stand on?” asked the rationalist James. “Another elephant,” came the reply. “And what is beneath that elephant?” asked James, and the answer came again, “Another.” At this point, the Mahatma interrupted and said, “Dr. James, I must tell you, it is great white elephants all the way down.” For us Unitarian Universalists, it’s humanism all the way down.
All humanisms share some common characteristics. First, a fascination with and honoring of the human. Second, an understanding that as human beings, we bear a responsibility for our lives and for this world. And third, that we humans are put together in such a way that we CAN be responsible for the way we live our lives and for the world. All humanisms, of whatever variety, share these 3 threads.
Taken together, these common themes stand in stark contrast not only to conservative orthodox Christianity, but to religious fundamentalism of all kinds, which insist that humanity is hopelessly depraved, inherently careless, helpless to improve, incapable of responsibility, and that therefore all volition and control must be submitted to divine and human authority figures. This fundamentalist position also contrasts sharply with the principles of Unitarian Universalism. It is no wonder why John Weston says that humanism is the “common currency of our movement” -- but common currency should never be mistaken for orthodoxy.
It is unfortunate that all the different kinds of UU humanists don’t always get along with another or even understand one another. For some years in the 1990s, across our denomination, many traditional UU humanists have expressed feelings of loss and dismay. This was chronicled in a coverstory in the UU World magazine in 1997 (for which I was quoted in a sidebar entitled “Ain’t I a Humanist?”). It is revealing that the World’s editor chose to title the article “The Marginalized Majority: UU Humanism in the 1990s.”
It is true that in the early fervor of young humanism that adherents were often rather loud in their dislike of any religious language whatsoever, or any ritual or spiritual trappings, what one humanist famously derided as "smells and bells." This distaste often extended to the utterance of a single word in the service. When I first arrived to serve the Chattanooga congregation, I ended one of my sermons with "Amen" -- and two older gentlemen stalked out, outraged.
There is a new version of religious humanism in Unitarian Universalism today. It is a religious humanism that still values the role of science and the intellect and continues to assert that orthodox religions must be transformed by modern insights. But today it is understood that these insights might include a broad range of ritual, practice, belief, story, myth, and study, and the use of religious language with new understandings. UU humanism has changed and grown and become more inclusive; I think that this is a good thing.
These hope-filled words come from my colleague and proud humanist Fred Muir:
The new religious humanism uses the language of balance, of balancing left and right sides of the brain, of reconstructing dualism in order to honor the interdependent web, of breaking up (but not eliminating) the century-old mantra of reason, rationality, and responsibility with myth, soul, ritual, and spirit. This is a religious humanism for a new century, a new millennium -- this will be the core of our Unitarian Universalist faith.
So might this be! AMEN -- ASHE -- SHALOM -- SALAAM -- NAMASTE -- BLESSED BE!
A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY ON UU HUMANISM
Muir, The Rev. Frederick John. “How We Got From There to Here: From Unitarian Christianity to Unitarian Religious Humanism,” in UUMA Selected Essays, 1999.
Ross, Warren R. “The Marginalized Majority: UU Humanism in the 1990s,” UU World magazine, Nov./Dec. 1997
Weldon, Stephen P. “Secular Humanism: A Survey of Its Origins and Development,” in The Journal of Religious Humanism, Vol. XXXIII, numbers 3 & 4.
Weston, The Rev. John H. “The Seven Humanisms and How They Grew,” Unitarian Universalist Voice, Fall 1996
Wintermute, Carol. “Varieties of Humanism,” in The Journal of Religious Humanism, Vol. XXXIII, numbers 3 & 4.
