A visitor to a Unitarian Universalist church sat through the sermon with growing incredulity at the heretical ideas being spouted. After the sermon, one of our members Clem Chow approached the visitor and asked her, "So how did you like it?"
"I can't believe half the things that minister said!" sputtered the visitor in outrage. "Oh, good -- then you'll fit right in!"
An Acquaintance of Mark Walls asked him if he had any affiliation with organized religion. Mark proudly replied. "No way man, I'm a Unitarian Universalist." (*I'm kidding. The names have been added for play and dramatic effect)
Today it is my goal to increase understanding and appreciation of the fact that there is an organization that is largely responsible for our church being here. It is an organization responsible for the shape, direction and quality of our religious lives together. An organization that demonstrates leadership and helps us to live our "Principles and Purposes" in order to transform the nurture our spirits and transform society.
That organization is the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, and we are part of it. Today I hope to raise our awareness of the necessity, and beauty of our association, and I'll begin by illuminating the major assumptions that have kept us from appreciating it and giving our loyalty to it.
Despite the fact that we are a religious body, we have sometimes tried to distance ourselves from organized religion because we associate it with harm and oppression. We've associated it with dogmatism that interferes with the development of critical thinking skills. We've seen that people who believe that they have the truth, are less likely to pay attention to facts, logic, or any reality that challenges their claim to the truth. People who have the truth don't have to explain their inconsistencies.
We have seen how so called "religious" people act when given positions of authority and power in our nation. We have suspected that decisions are being influenced by loyalty to particular creeds and interpretations of bible stories rather than citizen's needs and interests. Many political liberals want to avoid giving nuclear codes to someone with an excited belief that we are in the end days- to someone eager for the "savior's" judgment upon nonbelievers. If being religious means rigidly holding to an ancient story and hardening your heart to the suffering of people today, then we don't want to be religious.
The second negative assumption about religion is that it tries to get people to believe things that are contrary to logic; contrary to how nature seems to work. When someone asks us what does your religion believe, they are expecting to hear an explanation for life; its meaning, its origins and it's destiny. More to the point they are expecting to hear what supernatural, fantastic and extraordinary things our religion asserts in its attempt to explain life. What mind-bender ideas does your religion ask us to believe to go along with its game plan for living?
This assumption is two fold. We assume that religion will provide with a guidebook with rules for living. Second we expect the guidebook to offer a supernatural story, one we would never have imagined as an explanation for why we are here and how we must live.
With this understanding of religion, it's no wonder that we see such a gulf between religion and science. We expects science to explain the things we can see, hear and measure. We expect religion to tell us of a supernatural realm that happened in the distant past, and that reassert itself now and then. We are told that we have to believe the truth of a supernatural story in order to understand and appreciate the world that we can see, hear and measure.
It's no surprise that we are hesitant to call ourselves religious people, because we see religious people insisting on magical thinking and logic based on fantastic premises. We have seen how religious people have influenced the choice and availability of textbooks. We have seen them rid schools of real sex education. We see them trying to pass off creationism as science.
The other major cause for distrust of organized religion is its history of hypocrisy, its record of claiming some mission with high and mighty purpose, in order to justify or distract from the reality of its blatant attempts to gain power, wealth, influence and dominance at any means. I've heard this tendency referred to as "the institutional beast." It's the tendency for any institution, once established to abandon principles and shift to policies and practices that seem more likely to ensure self perpetuation. A religion that arises from wonderful humanizing principles quickly shifts and adopts policies to gain power and influence.
The institutional beast exists not only in religious traditions, but in every institution. An educational system ends up promoting ignorance. A medical industry ends up promoting chronic disease. Social reform agencies end up establishing or enforcing the existence of a permanent underclass. In each case the promotion of dependency enables the institution to gain power.
The harmfulness or potential harm of religion may be more obvious than other institutions because it bears undue responsibility for the belief systems that gird the societal structure. Religion, perhaps more than other of society's institutions provides the justification and rationalization for society's perpetuation of traditions of violence. For example, a theology of dominion over nature enabled and justified slavery, genocide of indigenous people, exploitation of Earth and dominance of women. Religion plays a crucial role in getting people to accept a world view that supports the power of the dominant ruling class. If you will permit an aside, I won't resist taking the opportunity to suggest that in our current society the mental health system functions as a religion in the sense I have just outlined. It serves to enforce the roles of an oppressive society by silencing the signs and the sounds of those who don't conform or are crushed by the brutality of the social order. If you are normal, you fit in and accept things the way they are. If you don't than you must be "sick." It's like religion saying if you oppose the social order than you must be evil.
This is the tendency of conservative religion. Conservatives tend to be distrustful of change. They promote rigid adherence to doctrines that support existing social structures.
Liberals aware of "the institutional beast" have tended to be critical and distrustful of societal structures and institutions. Historically, being liberal has meant seeking social change toward liberation. The problem is that we distrust and interfere with the development of the structures and organization necessary to enable our success.
Every living organism must have structure. Every living organism affects the organization of its environment. In fact no organism can exist without participating in a larger network. Life is a network of networks. Dr. Martin Luther King referred to it as an "inescapable network of mutuality." Alder Fuller, professor of Complexity Theory told his students that every day he looks into his bathroom mirror and says "how are we doing today?" He told us that the complex structure in front of him existed because of symbiotic relationships; that inside our organism exists several species of microorganisms and bacteria that make life possible.
Nothing exists except in relation to something greater. It is impossible to identify or understand anything except for its relation to other things. Of course the language here is entirely flawed precisely because it causes us to conceive of things. We end up imagining ourselves and others as objects ultimately separated from each other.
The Buddha taught that our suffering is caused by this tendency toward illusion, our inability to see life as it really is. We don't see life as it really is because we conceive of things as if they have a separate existence. We tell ourselves that "if you want something done, you have to do it yourself." How many of us built our own house? built our car? Built the roads we drive upon? Grew the food we ate that is giving us energy right now? We forget our interdependence and cling to the illusion of independence. We ignore or deny the support that is given to each of us.
Perhaps the primary purpose for having a church is to provide each of us an opportunity to give our gifts in a way that enables us to experience and understand ourselves as part of something greater than ourselves. Giving our gifts, that's what we were created to do. That's what we are designed to do. That is what every cell of our body does and that's what every cell of our body pushes us to do.
The tree wants to flower and bear fruit. The green plant needs to give off its oxygen. The fish is driven to spawn a new generation. The rock is destined to become a mountain or crumble downward, and either way to provide structure for lichen or other life forms to grow.
Life is also designed with the need to receive. No organism can live without taking in energy from outside. Life swirls and twists and bends creating new forms, new shapes. And every place that you see life, you see a network of networks. An association of associations.
Who are we associating with? We are associating with the people that possess this building and grounds. We are in association with someone who balances the checkbook for our organization, and with others who prepare programs for children and adults. We are in association with people who minister to the needs, the heart and soul of all who visit here.
And who comes here? Stand up if this is your first Unitarian Universalist congregation. Are the rest of you grateful that they found us? Stand up if you came to CUUC for the first time within the last 4 years. Stay standing if you had some knowledge or experience of Unitarian Universalism before coming here. This congregation would not be here, it certainly wouldn't be what it is were it not for the existence of association of Unitarian Universalist congregations. If you think that the UUA is some- thing that only exists out there in Boston, think again. We are the association of congregations. In the same way as the people come together and pitch in with funds and labor to sustain a congregation, congregations come together to make the UUA.
The UUA isn't a building in Boston. The UUA is not contained there. It continues through Rev. Susan Smith, our district executive. The UUA is Rev. Aaron White serving our district helping congregations learn from and minister to young adults. The UUA is Jennifer Nichols who supports the religious education programs in our congregations. The UUA is seen and known through educational materials and programs such as "Welcoming Congregation" and "Green Sanctuary." The UUA is the fall conference where I will be offering a 15 hour training for church leaders to develop peacemaking skills. It's the Spring conference and the summer institute. It's the general assemblies where we gather each year to vote to take stands and begin study and discussion of issues such as ethical eating. It's people from countless congregations who have completed surveys reviewing our Principles and Purposes. It's Gini Courter, our moderator. It's Rev. Laurel Hallman, minister of First UU in Dallas, and the people supporting her as a candidate to become the next president of our UUA. Most of all its a covenant between our congregations that says why we exist, how we will treat each other and what we will strive to do in the world.
The UUA is a network of networks of people who are showing the world that religion can embrace science. It's a movement of people who value reason and democracy. Who are committed to promoting a free and responsible search for meaning. We are a people learning what it means to affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
We are a religious people who believe in the existence of the institutional beast. Therefore if you can't believe half the things that the minister said you are welcome here. If your hairs stand on end sometimes when you hear someone say or imply, "we all believe thus and such, or that there is only one way of looking at things, then you are a part of us. We invite you to join us in valuing this congregation and the association of congregations of which it is a part. We ask you to help us remain a work in progress. Without your positive and negative feedback, without your challenge, question and support, we would become a work in regress.
When you join this church and contribute, some of your money goes to the UUA. Today I am asking you to participate and support the UUA freely and consciously. I am asking you to claim it, to get to know it and choose to shape it. The UUA is not perfect. We don't expect you to agree with everything the UUA says or does. You will not get excited by every thing that is published or promoted from Boston.
This week I was talking to Shiloh about the good news of her father, Rawlin joining our congregation. I laughed when I told her that we expected him to have issues with us, and that we hoped that he always would. That's part of what it means to be UU, I said. Belonging doesn't mean that you have found the truth. That's not what being religious means to us. We expect the learning to continue as long as we are UU.
Together we will strive to ensure that our religion remains a force for truth. We will support the association and guard it against the institutional beast. We will care enough to warn it when it becomes a work in regress. We will help it to learn and grow, and we will give thanks for its existence.
So be it.