Tag Archives: William R Jones

Unitarian Universalist Humanism: Introductory lecture

Introductory lecture delivered tonight, in a course in UU humanism:

In this introductory lecture, I’m going to attempt to outline Unitarian Universalist humanism for you. My primary approach in this lecture is going to be based on an approach used by the humanist theologian Anthony Pinn in his book Varieties of African American Religious Experience. After pointing out the inadequacies of theological traditions which merely point towards some ultimate revelation, something beyond what we see and hear and experience in this life, Pinn describes his approach as follows:

“I want to suggest that the task of … constructive theologies … is more in line with [Gordon] Kaufman’s ‘third-order theology’ and Charles Long’s reflections upon the theology of the opqaue. That is to say, theology is deliberate or self-conscious human construction focused upon uncovering and exploring the meaning and structures of religious experience within a larger body of cultural production. It is, by nature, comparative in a way that does not seek to denounce or destructively handle other traditions.”

I find Pinn’s approach to theology to be incredibly useful for at least four reasons. Continue reading →

Notes on our theological boundaries

These notes are addressed to my fellow Unitarian Universalists, although they may be of some interest to other liberal religious persons. I’ve been thinking about this question: Where do we draw our theological boundaries? Having some sense of where our boundaries are will help us to answer another questions: whom do we keep out, and whom should we be seeking out to welcome in? Mind you, these are just notes — which means your thoughts, reactions, and comments will be most welcome. Continue reading →

Questions, and responses

After the question and response sermon here on June 4, a member of the congregation sent me one more series of related questions. I liked his questions so much, that I have his permission to reprint it. I’ll also include my responses to his questions, but as always my responses are provisional, subject to further thought, reflection, and modification.

Dear —–,

You ask a series of excellent questions, starting with…

In many ways, the 20th C was the worst in the history of the world, in human behavior: the Holocaust, the Stalinist gulags, the Sino-Japanese wars and associated atrocities, WWI and its 700,000 dead per week during certain attrition, and then–often not included in this–our own A-bombs and fire bombs on Dresden. Isn’t the UU “soft on evil”?…

This is a key question for all religious liberals in our time. I do agree that such a critique may be valid when applied to certain Unitarian Universalists. For example, the bitter and long-standing feuds within our denominantion between the theists and the humanists are little more than quaint theological diversions when considered in light of the massive evil of the 20th C. (evil which shows every sign of continuing into the 21st C.). When you are confronting things like genocide and totalitarianism, such 19th C. arguments about belief vs. unbelief seem utterly insignificant, and indeed morally bankrupt. Instead of participating in abstract theological debate, the situation calls for direct confrontation of evil.

But some of our most persuasive theologians and some of our most influential lay leaders have been quite aware of the presence of evil, and they have devoted themselves to articulating theologies that will help us confront and overcome evil. Some examples:

William R. Jones, UU minister and theologian, is best know for his book Is God a White Racist? Jones is an African American who is all too aware of the presence of evil in the world. His contribution to theology has been to work on a black theology of liberation that was not dependent on God.

James Luther Adams, a Unitarian (later Unitarian Universalist) minister and theologian visited Nazi Germany just prior to the outbreak of the second world war. He got to know the members of the Confessing Church quite well, and was himself active in struggles against totalitarianism. His theology aimed to develop liberal religion in part as a way to fight totalitarianism through supporting democratic ideals (you could say he saw democracy as a theological concept).

The Women and Religion movement within Unitarian Unviersalism took on the evils of sexism in our denomination, in the 1970’s and later. I would argue that their movement did more to shape who we are as a religion today than any other theological force in the past half century. Currently, ethicist and theologian Sharon Welch is the most prominent UU scholar doing work in the area of feminism.

Is our theology, derived partly from a civilized 18C deism and 19C Concord, out of step with our horrid experience of the modern world?

That’s an argument that has been made, but I don’t find it persuasive. I feel that the theology which continues to be most influential for us today is not deism or Transcendentalism, but the theology of the social gospel. The Social Gospelers understood sin to be more than a personal matter — it was equally sinful (or even more so!) to allow social injustice to be perpetrated against the poor and the weak of society. Therefore, redemption had to be more than personal — it also had to be communal — you can’t just “get right with God” on your own, you have to consider the sinfulness and redemption of the surrounding social matrix as well.

The Social Gospel movement made social justice activity an essential part of church life — it was no longer enough to engage in simple charity, churches also had to fight to change the root causes of social evil. I’m something of a modern-day Social Gospeler, and I would articulate the theological implications of this theology something like this: Evil is present in us and in the world; it is our repsonsibility to overcome evil, especially where such evil arises from human actions; if you want to call on God for strength and guidance while you work to overcome evil that’s fine, but don’t expect God to bail us out.

Isn’t, for instance, Calvinism — and its “Born Damned” — easier to credit — and to understand?!

Well, that’s certainly the answer promoted by the fundamentalist Christians who are creating a reductive and conservative version of Calvinism in our time. But it strikes me that such a Calvinism is merely a cop out — it’s throwing up your hands and saying, We’re all horrible so why bother to change anything. William R. Jones’s work helps us understand that such an attitude allows us to dodge responsibility, because evil is just all “God’s will” — which means that, sure, you have to wrestle with the intellectual problem of theodicy, but you don’t have to take any responsibility for confronting evil yourself.

In summary, I find liberal religion in general, and Unitarian Universalism in particular, to be quite aware of the massive evils in society, and in our own hearts. I am not proud of the way Unitarian Universalists get sidetracked into petty concerns like whether or not God exists (especially when half the time the people who argue about these things don’t adequately define their terms). Nor am I proud of the way we all too often engage in social action without engaging in the necessary theological reflection. Yet I am proud of the fact that we continue to challenge evil in the world (and inside ourselves). And I am proud that, rather than just managing the symptoms of evil, we do make progress in rooting out deeper social evils when and where we find them.

That’s my response to your questions — as always, it’s a response, not a definitive answer! — Dan

untitled

At his request, today I’m turning the blog over to my alter ego, Mr. Crankypants. While he is not my favorite person in the world, it’s really hard to turn down a request from your alter ego (just ask Dr. Jekyll). Without further ado, then, please welcome my alter ego, Mr. Crankypants….

Humanism. Theism. God doesn’t exist. God does exist. Mr. Crankypants is sooo bored by Unitarian Universalists who have endless debates about whether or not God exists. It is just too early-20th century. Yawn.

I mean, for pete’s sake, thirty years ago already William R. Jones pointed out that the real divide isn’t between theism and religious humanism. It’s between the religious right who blame everything on God, and those of us who actually take some personal responsibility for the world. Why, in his essay “Theism and Humanism: The Chasm Narrows,” Dr. Jones sounds even crankier than Mr. Crankypants:

“For these reasons [says Dr. Jones], I see the coming encounter and dialogue between humanism and theism not as the occasion for sour-tempered vendettas, but as another of those recurring interludes in the history of the race when the search for truth pits conscientious antagonists on the battleground of human thought. The issue is not who wins, but whether the combat enlarges our understanding of ourselves. And as future generations review the coming clash, the verdict may well be that the adversaries were, unknowingly, not-too-distant relatives.”

Although the bit about “conscientious antagonists” is a little too earnest for Mr. Crankypants, and “enlarges our understanding of ourselves” is a little too pious, he does love the phrase “sour-tempered vendettas.”

Not that Mr. Crankypants has anything against sour-tempered vendettas. No indeed! He engages in them on a daily basis. But he is mortally offended by boring sour-tempered vendettas like humanism vs. theism. Let’s focus our energies on fun and new sour-tempered vendettas — perhaps a pitched battle about the way Unitarian Universalists market themselves to the world. What’s that you say? How delightful! Something new to get cranky about!

Belief, schmelief

Forget those beliefs, we do have a unifying theology.

I’ve decided I’m bored with the ongoing debate about whether Unitarian Universalists have a unifying theology or not. It bores me because all too often instead of getting into the really interesting areas of Unitarian Universalist theology, it winds up with someone declaring, “Well, I don’t believe there’s any unifying theology. I can believe whatever I want to believe in this church.”

Well — no. You can come up with counterexamples to disprove this last statement just as easily as I can. Obviously, we simply won’t tolerate outright sexist beliefs that proclaim men are superior to women. We have a low tolerance for charismatic authoritarian leaders who would control how we think and act. We would never require our young people to spend a year or two trying to convert people to Unitarian Universalism. If you want to believe these things, it will be easy to find you a church where you can believe ’em — but you can’t believe ’em in a UU church.

It is equally clear that we strongly affirm certain theological points. We strongly affirm insights of feminist theology, including that women are equal to men, that children are valuable, and that we are embodied beings. We affirm what William R. Jones has called the “functional ultimacy of humankind”; which is to say, whether or not we believe in God, we must act as if we have ultimate responsibility for our actions. We also remain strongly influenced by the insights of the social gospel movement of a hundred years ago, and we affirm that it is not enough for persons to try to save themselves, because in addition we all have a responsibility to save the world and make it a better place.

There you have three theologies which unify all us Unitarian Universalists: feminist theology, the functional ultimacy of humankind, and the theology of the social gospel. Bet we could come up with a few more, but that should be enough to get us started — and we do have to get started. All this boring bickering about beliefs is keeping us from acting out our theologies in the world.