Universalist Unitarian Church Santa Paula, California

Is Your Religion the Best in the World?
by Reverend John Alexie Crane

I felt I must be peculiar in this regard because it was clear that a lot of people I liked and respected did find meaning in it, were able to move with it, to profit from it. But I could not, though I tried from time to time. It left me with a vague, ill-defined sense that I might be lacking in some way.

However, even though my religiosity was lackluster, I still, oddly, took on a characteristic that tends to be typical of religious people, typical, indeed, of the human species generally. That is, since I was born and brought up in it, I had a dimly defined conviction that there was something unique, special, remarkable about Catholicism, that all other religious people were in some way lost, strange, misguided.

I felt this way about Protestants in general, and about Fundamentalists in particular. I had never been inside either sort of church, but I had a distinct impression that what went on in them was in some way barbaric, quaint, regrettable, and a little scary. I had the uneasy feeling that Protestants were capable of mysterious and evil acts. I was, as a result, more than a little startled to learn later that Protestants felt exactly the same way toward Catholics.

This, alas, is ever so often how it is with human beings. They can't seem to escape the conviction that their beliefs, their God, their customs, their way of life, their world view are superior to all others, that all the others are quaint or peculiar. This characteristic of our species is, I think, well expressed in a few lines of verse that I came across:

We are the Lord's selected few, Let all the rest be damned. There's room enough in hell for you — We won't have heaven crammed.

Isn't this typical of human beings? Each group of believers tends to regard all those millions of people outside their group as unsaved heathen. Indeed, many of the world's languages use the word “human” or “man” to describe their own people only, and use some other word to describe all outsiders. Like “barbarian,” for example.

This is the feeling, the conviction in each group, each society, each culture that leads people everywhere to press, almost instinctively it seems, for conformity to its established patterns, their feeling that all those who do not conform are strange, evil, or at the very least, misguided.

Now, I don't think there is any doubt that we Unitarians and Universalists are more than ordinarily tolerant in this area, but we're not altogether pure. We do not entirely escape this almost universal characteristic of our species. Let us confess freely that there is, in fact, some intolerance, some ethnocentricity, among us. We are not perfect.

There is among us, for example, a substantial amount of intolerance for all forms of traditional, orthodox religion. We have a tendency, many of us, to poke fun at it, ridicule it, laugh at its idiosyncrasies, dismiss it as beneath our notice. Many of us are fiercely intolerant also of social or political ideas that do not coincide with our own,

II . Are You OK?
Though it's almost inconceivable to me now, I recognize it's an inescapable fact that I was once an infant, then for many years a child. The same is true of you, you know. This fact of our existence, so often lost sight of, has a profound effect on our nature, on the quality of our selves, our lives, our experience.

This means that, for many years, the first years of our experience of life, we were small, weak, helpless, dependent, inarticulate, only dimly conscious, quite incapable of looking after our own needs, of ensuring our survival. Every last one of us began life in this state of being, and I have come to see that it's very hard for us to transcend it entirely.

It leaves all of us, even as adults, with some degree of uncertainty about our competence and capability, about our worth as creatures, about our ability to cope with all of the complications we face. We are none of us absolutely assured that we are all right, are acceptable, worthy of approval or affection. We try to conceal this uneasiness from others and indeed often even from ourselves. A great deal of our behavior, thought, fantasy, and energy are given over to attempts to gain some assurance that we are all right, are acceptable, worthwhile. This is one of the major drives in all human activity.

There is an interesting and simple way of expressing this idea in the system of thought of transactional analysis, which I expect many of you are familiar with.. The system uses a disarmingly simple vocabulary to talk about the enormously complex structure of human experience. It begins with the assertion that all individuals, early in life, settle upon one of four fundamental emotional attitudes toward themselves and others.

The.attitude most widely held by people grows out of this long experience we have of being dependent children for so many years. Let's say that I am three years old. I am just beginning to become consciously aware of myself and the world around me, and what do I find? I find that I am a tiny, weak, helpless, defenseless little creature surrounded by giants who have great power over me.

I am often dirty. I am clumsy, not skilled at anything. I wet my pants. If I do anything that the giants around me see as bad, I may be scolded by them, may be hurt and humiliated, and I am too small and weak to fight back. If I should try fighting back, I will be overpowered. I don’t know anything. I am little. I don't know enough words to speak with any clarity about what is going on in me.

This is how it was with all of us when we were children. The result is that many of us come to hold a basic attitude toward ourselves and others: “I’m not OK -- You're OK.” I come to the conclusion, deep within myself, that the giants, the adults in my life are OK, but that I myself am not. I am weak, inadequate, inept -- not OK.

But all of us wish to hold the feeling toward ourselves that we are OK after all, and striving to achieve this is the mainspring of human behavior. I'm OK : that's what everyone, in an infinite variety of ways, is striving for. That's what drives people to gain recognition, get ahead, earn a fortune, be a professor or a politician or a policeman. Be Somebody. That's why we need friends, need to be accepted and affirmed by others. That's why we need to love and be loved. These things bring us varying degrees of assurance that we are OK.

III. How to Deal Decisively with Bad Kids
One of the places where the Ten Commandments are listed in the Bible is in the Book of Deuteronomy, which consists almost entirely of a long list of laws, rules, and regulations for the government of ancient Hebrew society. The Ten Commandments are just a few of the hundreds of rules laid down in Deuteronomy, and I have for years found it interesting to browse through this old book to see what turns up. I don't do this every day, just now and then; and it's almost invariably interesting, tells me something about the problem of bringing order to the social life of human beings long ago.

All societies, of course, take steps to control the behavior of their people, with varying degrees of severity and rigidity. All try to keep behavior within certain limits. All make strenuous efforts to compel conformity to the established patterns of behavior, manners, values, customs, and the like.

This is exquisitely clear in Deuteronomy, where we see the early attempts of a society to create a pattern of life to which its people are vigorously compelled to conform. For example, one of the laws that appears late in Deuteronomy, long after the list of Ten Commandments, is the following: "If a man. have a stubborn, rebellious son who will not obey his father or mother, even though they punish him, then his father and mother shall take him before the elders of the city and declare, 'This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious and won't obey; he is a worthless drunkard.' Then the men of the city shall stone him to death. In this way you shall put this evil from among you, and all the young men of Israel will hear about what happened and will be afraid."

That's what the Bible enjoins us to do with a rebellious son, one who will not conform. It is not at all humanitarian, to be sure; isn't at all enlightened or understanding. But it is no doubt an effective means of social control, of enforcing conformity to the established order. You eliminate the rebels, and you scare the hell out of any others tempted toward rebellion.

Another brief example from Deuteronomy is one I have found interesting to consider: "If a girl who is engaged is seduced within the walls of a city, both she and the man who seduced her shall be taken outside the gates and stoned to death — the girl because she didn't scream for help, and the man because he has violated the virginity of another man's fiancee. In this way you will reduce crime among you."

IV. Pressures on Parker to Conform
There's nothing at all subtle about this means of enforcing conformity to the social order. It's exquisitely clear: conform or you will be stoned to death. However, we use many techniques for such enforcement now, and some of them are so subtle that we may not be aware of them.

Many years ago I ran across an example of this that I find has stayed with me, has cropped up in my mind often ever since. The central figure in it is a great Unitarian minister who was a leader in our movement back in the nineteenth century, Theodore Parker.

Parker was a brilliant preacher, an able scholar, a philosopher and theologian, as well as a vigorous participant in social action. He was, in the middle of the nineteenth century, heavily involved in the movement to abolish slavery, and his powerful addresses on the subject had made many enemies for him. So many indeed that Parker often kept a pistol ready on his desk while he worked on his sermons. His convictions were strong, and he spoke out freely, forcefully.

But this wasn't the only source of enemies for him. Parker was also a vigorous and original thinker in theology, and in 1841, he gave a sermon that proved to be a landmark in the development of Unitarian thought. It was titled, "The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity." It was so original, so far in advance of his time, that many individuals, Unitarians and Universalists among them, responded with anger and hostility.

In this brilliant address (which is still in print), Parker contended that, while a few of the ideas in the Christian tradition were of essential and lasting value, most of them must be understood as notions conceived by people in the ancient world, of no lasting consequence.

Parker said that "the great truths of morality and religion ... the deep sentiment of love to man and love to God" are the valuable core of the tradition; while the beliefs, doctrines, creeds, and rituals that have been laid over this core are transient rather than permanent. Rituals change from time to time; the creeds change, doctrines evolve, come to be interpreted differently. What one group of people at a given point in time regarded as heresy, may well be seen at a later time as devoutly orthodox.

There is the Bible, for example, Parker said. It has for centuries been regarded as the word of God, as complete and absolute truth. Yet, when you examine the Bible closely, you find it contains much fanciful fiction, many primitive ethical and theological ideas.

Then, consider Jesus, Parker said. For centuries people have insisted that Jesus' teachings are true because he was the Son of God and could work miracles. This is nonsense, Parker argued. If the teachings are true, they stand on their own merits. Truth doesn't have to be validated by miracles.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Parker's radical ideas dropped like a bombshell in sedate, proper New England society. Not only were the people of the orthodox churches aroused and alarmed by Parker's striking line of argument, so too were the Unitarians and Universalists. The Unitarian ministers in Boston were outraged by their colleague's inflammatory address. They were horrified by his radical revision of the Christian tradition, felt that Parker had brought shame and disgrace upon our religious movement.

They called a meeting to discuss the matter with Parker, and many of the ministers were angry, hostile, critical. The ministers decided that they could not tolerate Parker's presence among them. This was quite awkward because, since this was a Unitarian ministers group, committed to freedom of belief, freedom of inquiry, committed to tolerance of a diversity of views, they could not, in good conscience, expel Parker. So his colleagues told Parker that he should resign.

Parker replied that he’d be hanged if he would resign, and reminded them of what they stood for. However, the ministers, Parker's colleagues, continued to be hostile, insisted he had to get out; and then, all at once, this strong, dynamic, forceful, outspoken minister burst into tears and ran from the room.

You can, I'm sure, empathize with what Parker was feeling at this meeting. You've experienced it more than once yourself. All human beings do, in all times, in all societies. The people in the ancient Hebrew society we were just examining also experienced it: this determined and insistent pressure to conform,to the prevailing patterns of thought and behavior in one's society, among one's friends and family, associates or colleagues.

The pressures are experienced by each of us as extremely heavy. Even strong, courageous men like Theodore Parker are vulnerable. At this meeting in Boston in 1841, Parker faced pressure from friends and colleagues, people he cared about, respected. They told him in effect that he would either conform or get out. Either conform, or we will shut you out of our society.

All of us experience similar pressures (large and small) from the time we are small children. The pressures, indeed, are so frequent, so ever-present that we are often hardly conscious of them.

The pressure that Parker was subjected to was of very much the same order as that expressed in the laws of the ancient Hebrews in Deuteronomy. Either conform to the established patterns, or we'll stone you to death. To be sure, Parker's colleagues were not physically violent, but the emotional violence to which they subjected him was manifestly painful.

The Unitarian ministers felt threatened because of Parker's vigorous and original arguments. It was plain to them that Parker did not conform to the accepted patterns of thought among them. They concluded not only that he disagreed with them, but that he was a bad person, untouchable. They concluded that he was not OK, and they let him know this in no uncertain terms.

But Parker was not a bad person. On the contrary. He was an original thinker, and a courageous man. The sermon to which his colleagues responded so negatively has proved to be a landmark in the development of Unitarian thought, still remembered, still read today, a century and a half later.

How often in the past, how often today, do we shut out the work of an original mind because of our almost instinctive drive to enforce conformity?

V. A Creative Alternative
We need to be more aware, more conscious in this critical area of our experience together in society. How else could we relate to people like Parker? What alternatives are there?

Dr Alexie Crane
2880 Exeter Place
Santa Barbara, CA 93105
(805) 682-3476

Lex1304@aol.com

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