Universalist Unitarian Church
Santa Paula, California
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From the Darkness the Real Questions Arise:
Religious Humanism Today
by Reverend Carolyn Price
October 17, 2004

"And how are the children?"

I, like the Masai whose story we heard this morning, know the desired answer to this question is "the children are well." By this I'd mean that the children are safe, healthy and loved by two parents. They live in freedom. They are growing and thriving. And this is true for some children, the lucky ones. However, I think that if I had to answer this question now I would respond with "I am worried for the children." I am worried because of war, systemic poverty, the violence of greed and power, because of environmental damage and more. I would answer this way remembering that children, in the Masai tradition, does not mean only the young. It means the very old, the infirm, all those too weak to care well for themselves. Yes, I would answer that I am worried for the children.

Here in America, for example, we face an election moving toward us that has this country polarized as perhaps never before, bound by the emotions of fear and despair, anticipation and dread, which I know some of us are feeling deeply as we hope and we work for the outcome we believe in.

How are the children? Some of them are wonderful, I would answer. They are happy and strong and free, and I rejoice in their well being. But some suffer. They are impoverished, ill, and enslaved. I weep for these children of the earth.

What does this have to do with the new religious humanism, the topic of today's sermon, you may be asking? Certainly the older humanism, the one borne out of the enlightenment, would not give birth to a sermon that begun in such a way. Those sermons began in the abstract, in the intellectual milieu of theology and philosophy. Often resembling lectures - outstanding, lively and deep talks on matters of the time, they did not as a rule engage so directly as I just did with the emotional, or the shadow side of human existence.

But today I cannot imagine leading worship at such a time as this without begin able to speak of these things - to give voice to the worries of this world which are real and frightening. This is a long way from the determined stoicism that characterized the early humanism. One of the early humanists, the Rev. John Dietrich, was a leader in this new theology, but he did not address emotions. In fact he did not do much in the way of pastoral care. He "did not normally (even) call on members who were hospitalized. When asked why he did not (do this), Dietrich replied that they would have to learn to cope with their problems themselves. " I am grateful that here, in this congregation, we do religion differently. We share our joys and our sorrows, even when they give rise in us to deep or difficult emotion. We look to each other, and to the strength of the gathered community to celebrate with us, to mark our milestones, and when the time comes, to ache and to mourn with us.

It is good that you asked that question (or I asked it for you!), where is she going with this sermon? Asking questions is as much a part of our heritage as is being called heretics. This has been true for at least 500 years, dating back to a time in Poland when a small group of our Unitarian forebears spent time each week following the church service examining every tenet of theology that had been spoken by the preacher. They did this not to shed doubt on his sermon, but to vigorously seek the truth beyond the spoken words. They asked questions and posed theories. And then they questioned even their own answers.

This act of pursuing truth to the point of raising more questions, even when it went against the prevailing cultural norm, was what made our church a haven for those who sought to experience religion without leaving their ability to think behind. As Unitarian Universalists we have long been a home for such religious freedom. I hope we will never forget how much it matters to ask questions, not just in church but in all the areas of our lives. And when we learn to do this well, to stay together in the pursuit of truth and meaning even when it threatens to divide us, then, I think we have something to say to the world.

"Humanism" arose out of this process of deep critical thinking. It rose out of a growing doubt in the concept of god as a holder of truth and a growing certainty that science and empiricism were a better way to truth. It arose at a time in the history of the world when it was finally safe enough to question the status quo - to open up the field of theological inquiry to the men of science and reason, to cast stones at the castles in the air. Humanism was a strong and mighty movement for more than half a century. Some of us here today, especially those over the age of 60, were a major part of this living theology. Even in the 1990's humanism still ranked as the most popular theology among UU's.

But in the past few decades we have begun to question and to reshape the early humanism. Because we are relentlessly open to learning, we have looked outward, beyond our own thinking, for knowledge. From other religions we learned that there are many paths to truth, many ways to understanding. From the voices of feminism we realized that women's ways of knowing are different from men, but lead just as surely to truth and meaning. And thus, the tenderness and the power of emotion are not only recognized, but are respected in this new humanism. They are seen as an essential part of a wider whole, and a critical part of what it means to be fully human.

And so now we use the language and symbols of intuition and emotion in our sermons, our hymns, and our sanctuaries. For example, we often call our chalice the symbol of our faith, of the transforming power of love. We share joys and sorrows. We speak this morning about the fear or desperation that is in us at the prospect of this electoral outcome, and of our growing concerns for the earth's children. While we stand ever on the solid ground of reason, at the same time we value and speak of the mystics - as I did two weeks ago in my sermon on belonging. In fact many of our best thinkers in this new religious humanism: Richard Gilbert, Bill Murray, Sharon Welch, and Rebecca Parker call themselves "Mystical Humanists". This apparent contradiction captures a truth that they now recognize cannot be fully articulated by reason alone.

We listen and we learn, not only from each other, but from our lives and our times. A defining motto of early humanism was the brave belief in "the progress of mankind onward and upward forever". Really, they believed this. But their optimism could not long endure, and certainly no one could bear witness to the atrocities of the Holocaust, or, later, Vietnam, without concluding that our "progress" as human beings on this earth is marked by violence and suffering. I will speak more of this in my November 3rd sermon. But today's humanism holds a more realistic view of the human situation. And yet we have not forsaken optimism, though it is no longer an infinite "onward and upward forever" sort, but a hope as powerful as we can muster in the face of a broken world.

There is a story that may tell more. In South Africa, there was a prison on Robben Island where Nelson Mandela and other opponents of Apartheid were caged like animals. This was a place where the worst things that human beings can do to each other occurred. Mandela and the others suffered violence, cruelty, and despair at the hands of their jailers. They lived in a long narrow cement room, where the cold of winter never stopped coming up through the hard, rough floor. They had no cots, no chairs, no comfort for their bodies. In this place dozens of men endured entire decades in the long fight for freedom for South Africa. On a tour of this prison writer Margaret Wheatley remembers how the guide, a man who had been imprisoned there for twenty years, told of the violence and inhumanity he had endured there. He spoke of the slow, painful passing of year upon year upon year. But then, Wheatley said, this man whose hope for freedom had cost him so much, turned back toward the tour group and spoke, very quietly, telling them that, "Sometimes, to pass the time here, we taught each other ballroom dancing. "

Here is how Wheatley describes her response: "I have never forgotten that image, of demoralized and weary men teaching each other to dance in the cold silence of a long prison cell. Only the human spirit is capable of such dancing. " Today's humanism cherishes our human capacity to prevail on the side of life and hope even in the bitter face of systemic oppression. It embraces the ability of the human spirit not only to endure, to survive, but to learn to dance.

While the early humanism valued the individual sin qua none, this new humanism understands that we are always individuals in relationship. From the environmental and eco-justice movements we have learned that our place, most of us Unitarian Universalists, among the most privileged people on this planet imbues us with a moral imperative to act for the good of the whole. And so now we pay particular attention to those who live on the far perimeters of privilege, who struggle still for food, freedom - for fair and decent lives. We pay attention to all the children.

I think of the Sanctuary movement, which I imagine some of our older members here today can tell us of. This movement, for those unfamiliar to it, grew our of our UU response to the civil war in El Salvador that resulted in nearly 50 thousand deaths caused by officially sanctioned violence.

At our 1984 General Assembly, the entire gathered body of Unitarian Universalists developed a resolution to promote the housing of refugees from El Salvador and other Latin American countries where human rights violations prevailed. They drew on the ancient understanding of the church as a sanctuary, a place set apart from the letter of the law. And so, many of our churches, my home church - the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara - included, defied United States law, and opened our buildings to house men and women and children from El Salvador who had fled their violent homelands. We called this the Sanctuary Movement.

This movement was not without controversy - indeed churches lost a few people over it, just as we may now over the issue of marriage for gays and lesbians. But I have known well & listened long to those who participated in this remarkable time, and they tell of being forever changed by the sheer force of this acting for the good of the whole human family. This part of humanism - this relentless desire to create a better world, not just for a few, but for all - has not changed in our modernization of theology. I hope it never does.

It is not easy to be a religion rooted in the act of asking questions. Today, a hard question is being asked by some of our younger members and theologians. They question if the time has come to again speak of god, in a religion which turned resolutely from this concept, and all language of it, some 80 years ago. They are asking for a good reason. They have seen that in most of our congregations, this one included, our older humanists are being followed into church by a younger generation seeking spirituality, seeking to know and touch the sacred. And because we care about one another, because we value relationships, and in particular those cross-generational relationships that are so rare in the secular world we are pondering the question. Some have even asked if our long standing aversion to god and all talk of god has become the very thing we have always sought to avoid: a doctrine. Listen to these words from the retired minister of Kings Chapel, Rev. Carl Scovel, who describes his experience as a guest at another religious community. He tells us:

Remember that today's religious humanism begins not with the abstract, not in the fuzzy milieu of theology, but with the people. It begins with our lives, and the lives of all those with whom we share this earth.

And so, as contemporary humanists, perhaps we can begin here, with each other. Perhaps we can begin by looking deeply into one another's eyes, and bowing, if only in our hearts. One of us will do this, while saying "I." And, still looking deeply into one another's eyes, the other will do this and say - as if it were a prayer, even though we may not pray -"Thou". Perhaps this way of recognizing the sacred or the true in each other will give rise in us to one of the oldest of all our truths: that we need not think alike to love alike.

Some among us may want to bow, not only to another human being, but also to the mystery at the heart of things, perhaps even to give name to this mystery: god. I hold faith that we can widen our embrace to make room for this, to make room for all the questions. I hold faith that we can learn to live well together in our search for truth and meaning, in our quest (as we sung this morning) to serve the common good, and to make our own days glad.

Yes, we are aware of the fragility of human life on this planet. We are worried for the children. Here, in America, some of us freeze in fear at the thought of the possible outcome of this election. But this is not all there is, or all there ever will be. For what is also true is the will toward the good that exists in all of us. What is also true is that when we give the best of ourselves to one another, we bring love to light in the world, and this has the power to change us as we could not change ourselves. And what is also true, for as long as we have breath, is our human capacity not only to survive, but to triumph.

Indeed, this is of what it means to be a religious person - however we name our path: humanist, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Unitarian Universalist. It means to stay close to one another and when times grow hard, and the cold is all around us, to reach out our arms & to teach each other how to dance.

Amen, Shalom, and Namaste: All that is holy and true in me deeply honors all that is holy and true in you.
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Please join in singing hymn # 311 Let It Be A Dance
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Benediction: