Talking back to
A CHOSEN FAITH
by John A. Buehrens and Forrester Church
Book Available Now!
Talking back toA CHOSEN FAITHby John A. Buehrens and Forrester Church |
Book Available Now! |
This book is organized around the "sources of our living [Unitarian
Universalist] tradition". Two chapters are devoted to explaining and ruminating
on each one.
Quotations not attributed to other authors are nearly all from John Buehrens
and Forrester Church.
1. AWAKENING: To UUs, the most important thing about Jesus is not his miracles, not the Resurrection or the Ransom, but how he lived. He is important not as a savior but as an exemplar. I am not sure whether I am worried or relieved to hear this.
One reason I became one of Jehovah's witnesses was for the promise of everlasting life on a paradise earth. I was able to put off facing death for all that time. (I'm not ready to discount the possibility of an earthly paradise yet, though.)
Some people on #bahai were trying to tell me that biblical-style miracles were irrelevant because "everything is miraculous." Emerson calls this attitude "the invariable mark of wisdom." What this means is that God shows up everywhere. The authors conclude that an afterlife is no more unlikely than the present one. But we can't afford to forget that death is a natural and normal part of the whole scheme.
I think my fear of death is rooted in a horror of suffocation. When I think of death I think of strangulation or drowning.
And then there's the aspect of being sent to bed while the party is still going on. I simply don't want to miss anything. Think of all the wonderful books that I won't live to read.
If there's no afterlife whatever, I'll never find out what Mozart thinks of George Gershwin.
2. EXPERIENCE: This chapter contains a number of edifying biographical sketches of UU's who have accomplished good things, mostly not famous people. Also a sketch of UU's "intellectual and spiritual roots."
"In its midst, " says John Buehrens, "I have found the support to keep alive the questions of the prophets, to be challenged in my moral and religious living. I have discovered a tradition that takes seriously the rights (and responsibilities) of the individual in ethical and religious matters..." Well, Jehovah's Witnesses claim to offer this, too, but the scope is far too narrow. I am thoroughly sick of pushing unwanted doctrine on people who already have a connection to what is good. I had a discussion about this last night [sometime in July of 1995] on #uujoint. I believe we were talking about the idea that UU's do not proselytize. Bob Martin (a UU for the past 30 years) said maybe we should, and Dean Gay (a non-UU) said that if our religion really had more wisdom than other people's perhaps we had a duty to do so. I had a fit and explained why, pretty much as stated above. We left the issue unsettled.
Buehrens includes biographical sketches of famous UU's (and proto-Unitarians and Universalists) who have inspired him by living prophetically: Margaret fuller, who became a crusading journalist and as an associate of Emerson's; William Ellery Channing, one of the first generation of liberal ministers in America; and Judith Sargent Murray, who wrote many incisive moral essays and got them published under male pseudonyms.
"Religion is something that happens to you when you open your mind to truth, your conscience to justice, and your heart to love." Well, that is why I'm turning Unitarian. Actually, that was why I became a JW 22 years ago.
3. DEEDS, NOT CREEDS: More history. "[Calvinism's] [d]ouble predestination [of the saved as well as the damned] was a logical conclusion drawn from one of the basic premises of Christian theology: God's omniscience." Maybe this is the unconscious emotional reason why the Norse did not believe Odin was either all-powerful or all-knowing (at least, so says Robt. Heinlein in Job: a Comedy of Justice). Buddha went so far as to refuse to postulate a creator. C. S. Lewis and other Christians have been less honest, I think, in trying to postulate that for God "all times are now," so we can have both free will and divine omniscience, not to mention the granting of prayers and true prophecies.
I suspect that very few Christians who have any humility left really and truly believe in the granting of prayers. I know it was next to impossible for me to do so, for much of my life as a Christian.
Frank Church said that the liberal response to this doctrine went too far overboard in the other direction, insisting that all evil came from society and was impressed on individuals who were born innocent. Church himself, being a father, is less sure. Besides, he says, not everybody can be reformed once they have gone bad. Those who believe in the goodness of humanity tend to disbelieve in its evil.
"Morality not proved in deeds is betrayed by [mere] words," he says. Faith without works stinks on ice. Many UU's have proved by their works that they understand this principle -- from Clara Barton to James Reeb, and onward in both directions, too.
"It is not just the celebrated martyrs and heroes who help redeem this world, who confront 'the powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.' Even today, the difficult, ordinary heroism of unknown people in their daily lives is often more important than the inspiring words of their better-known leaders." Mute inglorious Mother Teresas.
I really need to buy a copy of this book, if only for the historical information contained in this chapter.
In the 1500's and the 1600's Poland (which shared some border with Romania until the Second World War) was enjoying a unique era of religious toleration. A populous Protestant reformed church thrived under the leadership of an Italian minister, Faustus Sozzini (Socinius). Under the Counter-Reformation Trinitarian belief was made a legal test for the privileges of citizenship. The church gradually declined, and was finally snuffed out in the Holocaust. Nothing is left of their churches but the grave of Socinius himself.
4. THE KNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN: From 1540-1617, King John Sigismund reigned in Transylvania, "the only Unitarian King in history." His court Chaplain was Francis David, who, in a debate between himself and assorted Catholic and Protestant opponents, declared to them that "If I win, I will defend to the death your right to be wrong," rather than having them executed for heresy as they surely would have wished for him.
Buehrens quotes Martin Buber as saying the French revolutionaries hit the nail on the head when they proclaimed " The Americans eventually perverted liberty into a sort of cultural and economic libertinism; the Communists degraded equality into iron-clad conformity. The two must be reunited if we are ever to have anything resembling peace and happiness, but it cannot be done without reviving fraternité -- human kinship.
So much for the Religious Right wackoes hyperventilating about a liberal plot to "destroy American's sovereignty." I still agree with Jehovah's Witnesses that, under the Kingdom of God, that would be a good thing. Especially if America can find no better advocates than Ollie North, or Rush Limbaugh, or, God forgive us, poor red-handed Bill Clinton.
The Bible has plenty to say about all nations coming to God's throne for judgment on an equal footing. On what basis do these goofballs equate America with the Israel of God?
"[Human] kinship can be recovered only by modern prophets who respect ordinary people, who will nurture, rather than exploit, their hopes and faith; by humble prophets who will dare to proclaim 'the prophethood of all believers.' "
No matter what age we find ourselves in, no matter how close to Ragnarok we may be, we must all continue to fight the Frost Giants, if only by blowing up on a little kitchen fire somewhere. We must, and we can, because the Frost Giants always lose -- for after Ragnarok (in some versions of the story) comes the primeval paradise again.
Buehrens concedes that you probably cannot crush a totalitarian government by nonviolent means (this was written before the collapse of Communism). But you can still exercise freedom of conscience, of expression, of association -- freedoms as vital to a starving man as to a college professor. (How can you have a food riot without freedom of association, even if the government doesn't grant it?)
After exhorting us to a prophetic life, Buehrens offers this advice on how to do it:
1. "Concrete acts of human service." This is obvious; it springs from the ordinary human empathy that I believe all babies are hard-wired for. But it doesn't get to the root of the problems.
2. Moral reflection and social education. This means brain-picking, research, colloquies.
3. Support and encourage those who act publicly to challenge evil. It may mean attending a demonstration or a public hearing.
4. Finally, make such challenges yourself, even if it puts your freedom and reputation at risk. Don't just preach against totalitarianism in South America; offer sanctuary to a refugee.
Ringing words alone do not make prophecy. No one will believe you, nor will your enemies be stung to anger by you, if your words are not grounded in experience, service, and work. Clean house for an AIDS victim. Find a free computer for a poor kid and teach him to use it. Remind a contentious married couple of their promise to treat each other decently. Start or join a Neighborhood Watch.
Buehrens says that the two great Unitarian Universalist symbols arose out of this ethic of the prophetic life. First he discusses the flower communion, a service designed in the 1920's by Norbert Capek, minister of the (then) largest Unitarian church inn the world, inn Prague, Czechoslovakia. Everyone brings a flower; the flowers are collected and blessed, and "everyone brings home a bit of beauty brought by someone else."
The other symbol is the flaming chalice, which was developed by a Czech artist, Hans Deutsch, in 1939. He was inspired by the life of John Hus, who in the 1400's held vernacular services, offered the communion chalice to the entire congregation (instead of reserving it for the priest, as per Catholic doctrine of the time) and was eventually burnt at the stake. Deutsch combined symbols of his generous doctrine and his martyrdom to make the flaming chalice -- to which many meanings have been attached since then.
Now, the UU Service Committee seems to be the sort of social action group I've been looking for: mostly anonymous, non-sectarian, and ultimately committed to "teaching men to fish."
5. THE CATHEDRAL OF THE WORLD: Regarding what Jehovah's Witnesses call "the world empire of false religion," Frank Church writes: "not a moment passes without the dreams of long-dead dreamers being outstripped, shattered, or abandoned, giving way to new visions, each immortal in reach, ephemeral in grasp." There isn't any monolith. Local adaptation is going on all the time. Half the people of the world are UU's without knowing (or caring, or [most of them] much needing to know).
We must respect and uphold religious freedom for the same reason we uphold academic freedom scientific research. It is impossible to know in advance where valuable insights will turn up; religious experience is a kind of research carried out with the heart.
"Were I to found a new sect," said Thomas Jefferson, "I would call [it] the Apiarians, and, after the example of the bee, advise them to extract the honey of every sect."
Someone named Angus MacLean said "that we are not 'bellhops of history passing the baggage of one generation on to another.' We have to unpack that baggage and make it our own. 'Culture makes it possible for human relations to bridge the grave, for individuals who are so short of days to live with a wisdom derived from the dawn of time,' he want on to say. 'Our job is not to worship history and culture like fetishes, but to feed them into our living, creative stream of personal life for spiritual and intellectual reprocessing.' " So what if we don't understand a passage of holy writ as it was originally meant; we can't anyway, since our experience is so different from that of the original audience. But there are still plenty of things that strike home, and the list of such things won't be the same for any two people.
In the few short weeks I have been searching for them, I have already found two extra-biblical ideas that have strengthened me: The Buddhist one that good or evil can fill you gradually, like water dripping into a pot; and the Asatru one that God (or the Gods) is not your master, but your friend. (As far as I know, all the Asatru sacrifices are communion sacrifices, rather than sin-offerings.)
I think the idea of God-as-friend may actually require polytheism. The entire vast Godhead is too great and terrifying to confront in such a way. Better to let It put on a little, human face, with a mouth through which to sip your offering of beer, mead or wine.
6. DIALOGUE: Many have dismissed the modern American tendency toward research into Eastern religions as a crackpot phenomenon. Mircea Eliade thought this was a mistaken assumption. True, only a few of these seekers actually take up a demanding foreign discipline like Zen Buddhism. The rest find that their understanding of human spirituality is deepened and their relationship to their own religious tradition transformed. To gain anything like full access to the treasures of your own faith, you may have to go outside it.
7. NEIGHBORHOOD: In order to get at these nuggets contained in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, we have to exercise reason in our approach to scripture -- sneering at neither human reason nor scripture. some parts of it are no longer relevant; others will never be irrelevant. Theodore Parker said that to accept Jesus' statement that the Law is reducible to "Love God with all your soul" and "Love your neighbor as yourself" "allows perfect freedom" to think not alike, but uprightly: to live not in conformity, but in holiness.
Frank Church says that "neighborliness" is the genius of the Judeo-Christian tradition; Micah 6:8; "Love is the Law's fulfillment"; Isaiah 61:1,2; 58: 6-10; the "sheep" who care for Christ's "brothers" in Matt. 25. And, by the way, I must look up the exclusionary interpretation that Jehovah's Witnesses have long placed on this passage; if I can find out how old it is I'll have a fair idea of who to blame for it. I doubt it was Charles Russell.
Frank Church misses a point in rejecting Prov. 25:21,22, the verse about "heaping fiery coals" on you enemy's head by treating him decently. The Governing Body had a stroke of genius when they remembered that the ancient smelting process was one of heaping fiery coals over metal ore, so the pure metal could drip out.
8. EXPECTATIONS: After a long lead-in about why our mostly Greco-Roman-Nordic culture should celebrate holidays based in a once-obscure Middle Eastern religion, Buehrens says that the major function of religion is not to meet but to overturn and transform expectations. God does this, says Buehrens, in the Creation: too much space, too much bewildering variety, too much abundance of objects, too much suffering (but that is partly our lookout). On the other hand, there is too much separation from God, too, and that, of course, is a lack, a deprivation.
A minister's function is to go against the grain, which is how Neil Postman saw the function of schools and teachers in two of his books: Teaching as a Subversive Activity and Teaching as a Conserving Activity.
True worship -- that is, honest worship -- should dig deep and reach high, should be broad enough to alienate no one and reach back into the past and forward into the future.
Flannery O'Connor once wrote that "You don't serve God by saying: the Church is ineffective: I'll have none of it. Your pain at its lack of effectiveness is a sign of your nearness to God. We can help overcome this lack of effectiveness." Well, then, by rights I suppose I should be a JW again; but I did not feel able to overcome the organization's lack of effectiveness, even in its stated mission. In fact, I was becoming infected with the very faults that so distressed me.
9. BEYOND IDOLATRY: Here Church wipes the scary make-up off the face of humanism. "God doesn't make us do anything; we are responsible for our own destiny, and capable of making it better."
And yet humanism can be perverted: Nazism is cited as an example, with its opposition to religion (to Christianity, anyway), and its deriding of real science as superstition, so that its own blasphemous "race science" could supplant the truth. Communism under Stalin was more of the same, as proved by the horrors of the gulags, to say nothing of the mass murders of peasants who wouldn't collectivize, and the institutionalized hypocrisy of all police states.
How, then, are we to recognize the onset of idolatry before it is too late? For Nazism was supposed to be a revival of the prostrate German nation, and communism was supposed to bring a truly egalitarian society to the world.
Church quotes a rule of thumb form James Luther Adams, whose work I find utterly opaque ("as accessible and pellucid as a brick," as someone once said of a book of James Tiptree's).
Anyhow, Church makes the point that it's our own virtues that can betray us. He cites a UU historian who identifies freedom, tolerance and reason as the essential principles of a liberal religious faith.
And yet: freedom, taken too far, leads to rootlessness and isolation, not to mention touchiness and arrogance. And arrogance infringes on other people's freedom. In times when religion and popular culture become horror-stricken and hidebound, it is time to emphasize freedom so as to get loose from this bondage. But where freedom is the order of the day, we need to emphasize social bonds and, yes, obligations, before they commence to unravel.
To make an idol of tolerance, of course, makes things worse: some things really are intolerable and must be resisted. Some of them are institutions and miscarriages of justice; some of them are people.
When reason is idolized, it becomes confused with mere data-collection, which, of course, eventually involves religious people in futile attempts to prove or disprove the existence of God by abstract logic. We'll turn into Thomas Gradgrind if we don't watch out. Instead, "reason suggests that beyond the rational lies a transrational realm. We enter it in our dreams [which, I suppose, is why we can often assign them meaning]; we enter it in moments of worship. We enter it singing, when the tunes are good, even if the words are not. We enter it in lovemaking and dancing and stargazing. We break through to a transrational realm, beyond knowing or naming."
What is this transrational realm? I think Church describes it pretty well when he says: "The Gaia hypothesis -- namely, that the earth is an organism -- combines the old Stoic notion of cosmic consciousness (which the apostle Paul adapted in his image of the body of Christ) with the transcendentalist vision of an oversoul." When we enter this transrational realm, we feel more than usually alive, because we feel, however dimly, that the whole universe is both alive and awake.
And if this is so (as my limited experience with religious emotion is leading me to suspect,) then God is literally everywhere, which also means that "God is inside us [and] our neighbor is inside us as well," which means that true self-interest and selfless service are one and the same.
I think I begin to understand what the Buddhists are going on about.
So rather than vitiating religion, or even mysticism, reason can provide tools for enriching it and applying its strength to daily life in the numinous-rooted world.
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