"What Do We Still Believe?"

The last person you might expect to have something to say about us

        is popular writer Stephen King,

                but now that his daughter is studying for our ministry,

                        he has come up with a trenchant definition of our faith.

"I tell [my daughter],"

        King told "The New York Times,"

                that Unitarian [Universalism] is God for people who don’t believe in God,

                        and she just laughs."

King’s description captures so well 

        what many find so difficult to understand about us.

 

We are a religious tradition that has evolved beyond traditional religion.

Throughout our history,

        we have pushed out beyond the boundaries

                set by other faiths.

We can live with ambiguity

        if as we can think freely,

                and we can live without precise definitions

                        as long as we keep learning.

                                                        

At the same time,

        we hold on to many of the trappings of traditional religion.

As someone visiting our church last week observed,

        many of the elements

                of our Sunday service

                        are just like what you might find in any Protestant church.

The message may differ,

        but the structure is the same.

We use many traditional hymns,

        although we sing our own words.

And we gather for worship on Sunday mornings,

        just as church people do.

 

Our customs are rooted in the same traditions

        as many other faith communities,

                Christian and Jewish,    

                        and we do not discard them hastily.

The link to our past still means a lot to us.

A few of you would throw out the hymns.

But we tend not to tinker with rituals and practices 

        that give us structure and comfort 

                when we are together.

These attachments do not hinder our freedom;

        on the contrary, 

                they may nurture it more than we realize.

 

One concept we left behind a long time ago, however,

        is the traditional theism that John Shelby Spong describes

                in his book "Why Christianity Must Change or Die."

Our point of departure may have been as early as 1819,

        when liberal preacher William Ellery Channing

                rejected the doctrine of the trinity,

                        the miracles of the New Testament,

                                and the authority of the bible

                                        all in one sermon,

                                                titled "Unitarian Christianity."

What was left was Channing's deep faith in humanity,

a religious conviction with social implications.

He saw God in the human capacity to learn and grow,

        and he exhorted his many followers

                to live their faith as Jesus did,

                        in works of compassion and justice.

 

Channing also insisted on the importance of reason 

        in the search for truth.

The scholars of his time were the first to approach the bible

        as a document to be interpreted

                and a human artifact to be studied,

                        rather than as God's revelation to be accepted.

Biblical criticism used the tools of reason –

        open minded inquiry and logic –

                to analyze what had never been questioned before.

 

Nothing would ever be the same again.

Channing liked it that way,

        for he had a vision of a new faith,

                one that evolved through learning,

                        that freely embraced new truth

                                and fearlessly shed whatever did not fit.

The God of the bible did not fit.

        

Those who followed Channing,

        especially the young radical Transcendentalists 

Emerson and Thoreau,

        went to work discovering new images of divinity.

They found that the experience of nature

        and the exploration of the inner self 

                offered new ways of seeing and thinking about the holy.

They experimented with spirituality,

        separating it from tradition

                and seeking it in whatever was new and different.

What was new and different to Emerson and Thoreau

        was Eastern religion,

                which challenged their provincial New England sensibility

                        and led them – and our movement –

                                decisively into the religious pluralism 

                                        that is our context today.

 

That is how we evolved out of traditional theism.

What we have been doing for the last hundred and fifty years

        is searching, in every imaginable way,

                for what Stephen King called the God 

                        for the people who don’t believe in God.

For many Unitarian Universalists,

        the search resulted in atheism.

Unitarian Universalist atheists

        are people who no longer believe in the God of theism

                and do not seek an alternative.

Some find that acceptable,

        but the rest of us keep searching

                for that alternative,

                        the God beyond the God in which we no longer believe.

 

As Spong the Episcopalian asks,

"Can God be real and yet not be located in an external place

        as a supernatural being?

Can God be real if there is no divine entity

        that can be invoked to come to us 

                in our moments of need?

Is there a presence at the heart of our life

        that could never be invoked as a being

                but...might be entered as a divine and infinite reality?"

To answer these questions takes a new way of looking 

        not only at God,

                but at human experience as well.

 

This Friday I attended, along with several other church members,

        an event that has become an annual tradition

                in our community,

                        the "Celebrating Success" award ceremony 

                                sponsored by the Westside Shelter and Hunger Coalition.

The ceremony recognizes the success of individuals

        who have overcome adversity

                and have achieved healthy and self-sufficient lives.

Stephen Knight, chair of the Coalition, describes the event in this way:

It is "a personal and honest view of the power of change within one's

self...

Each honoree...represents thousands of others

        who made a personal decision 

                to make a positive change in their lives 

                        by seeking the resources and support needed

                                to overcome issues [such as]

                                        substance abuse,

                                                domestic violence,

                                                        homelessness,

                                                                unemployment and poverty."

 

The personal accounts of the award recipients are always inspiring.

After eleven years of drug use and homelessness,

        Willie Bailey realized that 

                "God was the only way I could be relieved of my burdens."

He walked from 103rd Street and Central Avenue in Watts

        to the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration Medical Center –

                a distance of 28 miles.

The VA referred him to New Directions,

        a rehabilitation program for homeless veterans.

After thirteen months of treatment,

        Willie found employment,

                went back to school,

                        and plans to become a drug counselor.

"My goals today are to stay clean and sober

        and to help others," he writes.

"I live my life as a testimony of what God can do if we let Him."

 

The power of transformation

        that is the center of Willie Bailey's faith

                is the same power 

                        that William Ellery Channing placed at the center of his:

                                the ability of every human being 

                                        to change, to learn and to grow.

They may not have the same image of God,

        but somehow that does not matter

                when you see the results.

Perhaps God is in the caring and skill of the workers at New Directions,

        the rehabilitation program,

                that taught Willie the skills he needed to cope with life.

Perhaps God is in the strength that Willie possessed

        to walk 28 miles from Watts to West LA.

Perhaps God is in the room when Willie tells his story,

        and we remember, 

                if only for a moment,

                        that the power to change is in each of us too.

John Shelby Spong observed that once you move beyond theism,

        the question is no longer who God is,

                but what.

God the Father – the human persona traditionally assigned to God –

        becomes God the power

                that helps us to have a second chance.

God is the spirit that moves through us

        as we change and grow.

 

In the Aboriginal story I told earlier to the children,

        the people once spoke easily to their God, 

                the Great Spirit.

But they tired of getting up early in the morning

        and wanted to please themselves.

They abandoned the Great Spirit,

        and soon found they were all alone.

 

Fortunately, the Great Spirit had seen to it 

        that one man, Nurunderi, 

                could still address the Great Spirit

                        and bring back a message for the people.

And the Great Spirit came back,

        this time not as a person,

                but as wind and lightning,

                        thunder and flowing water.

Now when the people listen,

        they do not feel alone.

 

Our story is similar to the one the Aborigines tell.

There was a time when our God

        appeared to us as father or mother,

a compassionate and powerful being

        who knew our secrets

                and heard our prayers.

When that God no longer moved among us

        or spoke to us when we needed guidance,

                some of us concluded that we were all alone.

Others hoped for a sign

        that God was still present,

                in some form we could sense and understand and accept.

 

Neither way has been easy.

Images of the old God still dominate 

        the religious imagination of our times.

"We sense that our only hope,"

        Spong writes,

                "is to journey past those definitions of a God

                        who is external, supernatural,

                                and invasive …"

We search and speak among ourselves

        of alternatives we call

                spirituality,

                        ultimacy,

                                wholeness –

                                        so intent are we to move beyond

                                                what we have left behind,

                                                        we dare not call it God.

 

But Stephen King sees through us.

As he says,

        we seek the God

                for the people who no longer believe in God.

We seek God,

        as people seek strength to face problems,

                courage to make difficult changes,

                        and love to remind us that the struggle

                                is worth it.

And we still believe, 

        as William Ellery Channing did,

                that transformation is possible;

                        that the source of that power

                                is never out of reach;

                                        that all people deserve

                                                a second chance.

Now we journey onward,

        as we always have;

                one people, 

                        many paths;

                                joined by our faith in the human spirit

                                        and all that it brings it to life.

Sources:
"The Unitarians and the Universalists," by David Robinson (Westport, Connecticut: GreenwoodPress), 1985
"Why Christianity Must Change or Die," by John Shelby Spong(Harper SanFrancisco), 1998
"The New York Times Magazine," August 13, 2000