Category Archives: Theology

Where we’re coming from?

Theology comes from the week-to-week actions of a worshipping community far more than it comes from academia. Attend some Unitarian Universalist worship services and listen what is being preached, what is being sung, and what is being prayed, and you’ll learn more about Unitarian Universalist theology than if you read books by academic theologians like Thandeka and Paul Rasor. This isn’t meant as a put-down of academic theologians, it’s simply what I feel is true.

So when I read in our denominational magazine that one of our “most beloved hymns” is a song by Carolyn McDade called “Spirit of Life,” that makes me think that if I listen to that hymn, I’ll learn something about where mainstream Unitarian Universalist theology is these days.

“Spirit of Life,” says the hymn, “come unto me.” It’s a hymn written in 1981, one of the peak years of the feminist revolution, when women were really finding their voice and finding their power — the hymn is calling the power of the divine into women who had been too long ignored by Western religion. Or we could reframe that same idea with the insights of third wave feminism: “Spirit of Life” was written when second wave feminism was at its peak, when affluent white college-educated middle-class women were claiming additional power and influence for themselves by putting and end to discrimination against affluent white college-educated middle-class women — but the hymn assumes individuals will have a certain level of power and influence, and includes a cultural bias towards individualism. So if “Spirit of Life” is one of the most popular Unitarian Universalist hymns, we could probably conclude that the feminist theology we have hasn’t been particularly good at including women of color and working-class women.

(However, don’t take this a commentary on Carolyn McDade’s theology. Her earlier hymn, “We’ll Build a Land” from 1979, is far less individualistic, calling for solidarity with all persons with phrases like, “Come build a land where sisters and brothers/ anointed by God may then create peace/ where justice shall roll down like waters….”)

Parallel

While researching this week’s sermon, I came across this paragraph in Hosea Ballou’s Treatise on Atonement (1805):

To say God’s revealed will is contrary to his eternal and unrevealed will, would in me be blasphemy of the first magnitude; yet I do not doubt the sincerity of those who frequently say it. But is it not in a direct sense charging God with hypocrisy? However shocking it may seem, I know of no other light in which to view it. [link]

Isn’t this vaguely reminiscent of Theodore Parker’s distinction between permanent religions, and transient religion? In Parker’s famous sermon, “The Transient and Permanent in Religion” (1841), he writes:

Looking at the Word of Jesus, at real Christianity, the pure religion he taught, nothing appears more fixed and certain. Its influence widens as light extends; it deepens as the nations grow more wise. But, looking at the history of what men call Christianity, nothing seems more uncertain and perishable. While true religion is always the same thing, in each century and every land, in each man that feels it, the Christianity of the Pulpit, which is the religion taught; the Christianity of the People, which is the religion that is accepted and lived out; has never been the same thing in any two centuries or lands, except only in name. The difference between what is called Christianity by the Unitarians in our times, and that of some ages past, is greater than the difference between Mahomet and the messiah.[link to full text]

Obviously, Parker and Ballou are making somewhat different arguments, for somewhat different purposes. Ballou distinguishes between God’s “eternal and unrevealed will” and (conventional) revealed religion. Ballou’s purpose is quite specific:– to support his argument that, in contradiction to then-current Christian tradition, eternal damnation does not exist. Parker wants to show how religion as we experience it in day-to-day life changes and evolves. Parker’s purpose is more general:– he makes a general distinction between historically situated religion, and eternal permanent religion. Nonetheless, it’s interesting to see this parallel between two 19th C. religious liberals.

Delightedly annoyed (again)

The mail dropped through the slot in the door. Mr. Crankypants picked up the newest issue of UU World, the denominational magazine and mouthpiece, and opened it expecting to be delighted. UU World almost always has at least one article that annoys Mr. Crankypants, who delights in getting annoyed. And he was delightedly annoyed once again.

The first annoying article that caught his eye was titled “Not My Father’s Religion: Unitarian Universalism and the Working Class” by Doug Muder. (There may be other annoying articles in this issue, but Mr. C. is taking so much delight in being annoyed at this one that he hasn’t read any further.) Muder started off with one of Mr. Crankypants’s favorite critiques of Unitarian Universalism:– that we don’t welcome working class people. How true! But, annoyingly (delightfully annoyingly), Doug Muder places the blame on theology. Theology is a nice thing to write about, but to do so ignores a whole host of other, more than sufficient, reasons why working class people avoid Unitarian Universalist congregations like the plague.

What’s that you say? What are those other reasons?

You could start with social snobbery. Take, for an example, something Mr. Crankypants saw with his own eyes. The new Unitarian Universalist was talking with some long-time members at social hour one Sunday. The long-time members were talking about what their fathers did for work — lawyer, doctor, university professor, other professional high-status jobs. Wanting to include the newcomer, one of the long-time members turned to him and asked, “What does your father do for a living?” The newcomer replied, “He’s a janitor.” The conversation died abruptly and everyone drifted away from the newcomer. That newcomer lasted less than a year as a Unitarian Universalist.

You could add geography, demographics, and congregational lust for money. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, many Unitarian Universalist congregations decided to move their church buildings out of the downtown and into the suburbs. Mr. Crankypants has heard an apocryphal story that in January, 1953, the Board of Trustees of one Unitarian congregation was discussing selling its downtown building in order to move out to the suburbs. The minutes of that meeting supposedly record that the Board chair asked, “Why not go where the money is?” To which the minister (whose salary was dependent on contributions) replied, “Yes, why not?”

You could add the Unitarian Universalist obsession with college education, coupled with little support for helping people get a college education. In our snobbier congregations, one is simply assumed to have a college degree (preferably from a “good” college). But don’t bother to ask your typical Unitarian Universalist congregation for a scholarship, for tutoring, for moral support, or for any other help while you’re in college. They only want to see you when you get out of college, are married and in your thirties with children and a job. (Oh, and be warned:– if you want to be a non-traditional student, and finally go to college when you are middle-aged, expect even less support.)

Continue reading →

Some preliminary notes on evil

Does evil exist? This questions vexes many religious liberals. Of course evil does exist;– but how do we define it, and what forms does it take? Can we call a person evil, or just a mass of persons, a society? Does evil have an existence apart from persons and societies, or does it only manifest in the real world?

To avoid such vexing questions, some religious liberals deny that evil exists. Some others claim that evil is a false construction arising from the errors of religious conservatives or fundamentalists. A larger number of religious liberals simply avoid using the word “evil,” substituting words like “inhuman” (even though it’s quite clear that humans are fully capable of evil), or “pathological” (which may imply that disease is at the root of all evil, or perhaps even that evil is at the root of some diseases).

I think it makes more sense to say that evil does exist, and I think it makes more sense to use the word where I feel that it should be used. I’ll give you an example. I believe that torture is evil. I can’t imagine that there would be any doubt about that fact:– torture is indeed evil. But to say “Torture is evil” causes a small problem, because now you have to define what you mean by torture. George W. Bush has said that torture is evil, and he has asserted that the United States does not use torture (the events at Abu Ghraib prison were an aberration caused by some individuals going against U. S. policy). However, some critics have charged that the United States has engaged in torture. Both these critics and George W. Bush agree that torture is evil, but they have different notions of what constitutes torture, and therefore they have different notions of what is, and what is not, evil.

So while evil certainly exists, we don’t all agree on what is, and what is not, evil. In fact, consensus about what is evil may change over time. Five hundred years ago, there was no world consensus that slavery was evil. People like Paul of Tarsus accepted that slavery was a normal part of the human condition. Most societies around the world had some form of slavery. Yet today, five hundred years later, slavery is illegal in all nations, and there is a worldwide consensus that slavery is evil. Over the course of the past five hundred years, the working definition of evil has changed to include slavery.

I’d say, in fact, that the working definition of evil is always “in play.” Working definitions of what evil is can and do change over time. The important contests about what is, and what is not, evil take place in the public realm, just as the debate about the evil of slavery took place in the public realm.

This may help explain why some religious liberals are reluctant to use the term “evil” — if the definition of “evil” can change and evolve, who are we to make pronouncements about what is, or is not, evil? But this notion may well be based on two false premises. First, it may be that there is no such thing as absolute goodness, or absolute truth, or absolute evil. The accomodationist tendencies of religious liberalism, our willingness to adapt to the changing times, would seem to indicate that we don’t believe in absolutes. The process theologians among us even say that God can change and evolve (assuming that you believe in God) — so how can there be any absolute truth, absolute goodness, or absolute evil?

A second false premise may well be the assumption that one can remove oneself from debates about evil by simply not using the word “evil.” But if the definition of “evil” is a debate that is played out in the public realm, then to remain silent is to participate in that public debate by abstaining (abstention is still a kind of participation). Further, religious liberals act in ways that indicate what they do think is evil — the religious liberals I know believe that sexism is evil, and they act as if sexism is evil, and such actions are (in a very real way) a contribution to the ongoing debate about what is, and what is not, evil.

Fortunately, most religious liberals are willing to use the term “evil.” In one way, it speaks well of religious liberals that they use the term sparingly. On the other hand, it seems to me that we have to be willing to engage in the ongoing public debate about what is, and what is not, evil. If we believe, for example, that torture is evil, we have to talk about what torture is, and we have to talk about whether the actual torturer is evil, and we have to talk about in what way the society that condones torture is itself evil, and we have to talk about what it means that other people have other definitions of torture. If we don’t talk about these things in public, then we are abstaining from deciding such moral questions.

Just some preliminary notes on the topic of evil. Debate and discussion welcomed.

“Cultural politics and the question of the existence of God”

by Richard Rorty, in Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers, vol. 4. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007

When the American pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty died a month or so ago, I decided to add some of his writing to my summer reading list. The fourth volume of his selected essays, Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers, vol. 4, contains the essay “Cultural politics and the question of the existence of God,” and this essay seemed like a good place for a minister like to me start reading.

If you’re hoping for a definitive answer to the question, “Does God exist?” Rorty will not only disappoint you, he will also tell you (fairly gently) that it’s a bad question. There are better questions to ask, and these better questions have to do with what Rorty calls “cultural politics.”

So what is “cultural politics”? Citing philosopher Robert Brandom, Rorty says that the social world is prior to anything else. There isn’t some larger authority out to which we can appeal to set norms for society. This in turn means that societies, and the people who live in societies, cannot make appeals to God, or Truth, or Reality that trump all other appeals or claims. Your God, or Truth, or Reality can’t be considered an ultimate norm, any more than my God or Truth or Reality. Cultural politics, says Rorty, “is the least norm-governed human activity. It is the site of generational revolt, and thus the growing point of culture.” If you want a good example of how things grow in cultural politics, think about the U.S. Supreme Court decisions of Plessy vs. Ferguson on the one hand, and Brown vs. Board of Education on the other hand. Forget appeals to some transcendent Justice — we’re stuck with “the ontological priority of the social” (really a misnomer, since there is no ontology) — i.e., society, the social world, comes before anything else.

This being the case, rather than ask, “Does God exist?”, it would be better to ask, as Rorty phrases the question, “Do we want to weave one or more of the various religious traditions (with their accompanying pantheons) together with our deliberation over moral dilemmas, our deepest hopes, and our need to be rescued from despair?” Another way to make the same point is to say that, instead of having some kind of public religion ( “All U.S. citizens shall believe in the God of the Christian scriptures, as interpreted by the Southern Baptist Conference”), it would be better to have only private religion that stays out of the public sphere.

To me, as a Unitarian Universalist minister, all this makes good sense. I usually do not choose to play the language game that asks whether God exists or not. Continue reading →

Just thinking out loud….

In the June 12, 2007, issue of Christian Century magazine, I was particularly struck by the opening paragraphs of an essay titled “Unqualified Christians” — you may find it hard to get through the first three sentences, but see if you can keep reading:

You may find it strange that I, an African American, do not believe in interracial marriage. I do not believe in interracial dating or even in having friends of other races. I do not espouse trying to understand racial differences or promoting awareness of other races. I can say all of this unabashedly because I do not believe in race!

Race is a relatively recent construction conveniently created at precisely the moment when nations from the European continent were setting out to colonize the world. The construction is a precursor to an economic policy, not a result of scientific study. It came from the desire of some people to legitimate the taking of land from others. Because of perceived “racial” differences, people could be set on a hierarchical ladder of superior and inferior types; those declared “superior” then had an “obligation” to tend to the interests (natural resources and labor) of the “inferiors.” With this thinking, the “enlightened” peoples of Europe colonized the “primitive” peoples of Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. Such scriptural passages as Genesis 9 (the “curse of Ham/Canaan”) and Genesis 10 (the “table of nations”) gave theological significance to theories of subspecies variation and to a God-ordained system of enslaved peoples and a “master race.” Because the genesis of the word is spurious, I suggest that the concept of race is problematic. Even the most innocuous use of the concept perpetuates the notion that perceived differences in appearance relate to actual differences in intellect, criminal potential, and sexuality. Hence, to suggest that the theory of race is legitimate is a racist proposition, one that leads many to conclude that perceived differences in appearance are consequential for human valuation.

Towards the end of the short essay, the author, Rodney S. Sadler Jr., writes:

In the church we are too often isolated in segregated communities as “qualified Christians.” We are “black” Christians, “white” Christians, “Korean” Christians, and “Latino” Christians worshipping in separate sanctuaries….

Within Unitarian Universalism, it can be risky to state that race is an invalid construct. If you say that even the most innocuous use of the concept of race is a problem, there’s a good chance you’ll be accused of racism. For good reason — saying that “race” doesn’t exist makes you sound like the people who try to gut affirmative action and civil rights legislation by saying “race” doesn’t exist. Yet at the same time, I think maybe Sadler is right — even though to admit that Sadler is right might be to question the legitimacy of such beloved anti-racism strategies as breaking into racial identity groups.

“Race” may not exist, but we are still left with the problem that the effects of racism are quite real. So how do we address the real effects of an unreal construct? Sadler’s answer, from his Christian perspective, is to affirm the primacy of the Christian’s identity as a Christian: “Christ’s death has radically altered the nature of our identities so that who we are from the world’s point of view is no irrelevant as a determinant of power.” I don’t share Sadler’s theology, so that won’t work for me.

But Sadler also points out how his theology plays out in real life:– he claims that his theology forces us to question “persistent inequalities in our nation that are often seen but rarely examined.” Here’s how I’d put it in my theological language:– my religious perspective, which claims that all persons are equally worthy of love, requires of me that I understand and address persistent inequalities between persons.

In other words, it is possible to ask hard questions like — Why do certain persons get paid less just because they have darker skin? — without falling into the trap of using the suspect concept of “race” to frame the question. Sadler’s essay raises some interesting possibilities for new ways to address the persistent inequalities that exist among us.

Noted with comment

I’m lucky I’m a religious liberal, because religious liberals find absolutely no contradiction between the poetic truth of the Bible and the scientific truth of evolution. However, as reported in the New York Times on May 5, in an article titled “A Split Emerges as Conservatives Discuss Darwin,” that is not true for some of the candidates for the Republican nomination for President:

[T]he [Republican] party’s 10 candidates for president were asked during their first debate whether they believed in evolution. Three — Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas; Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas; and Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado — indicated they did not.

Silly boys:– saying they do not “believe” in evolution because their religion forbids them to. Yet their religion tells them that their God is omniscient and omnipotent. If their God is omniscient, then that God understands the difference between scientific evidence and metaphor; and if their God is omnipotent, then that God knows how to use metaphor in the Bible to communicate eternal truths.

Silly Sam Brownback. Silly Mike Huckabee. Silly Tom Tancredo. Don’t you think your God is smart enough to understand science and metaphor both? (And don’t you know that you’re embarrassing many of your politically conservative friends whose God is smart enough to understand that?)

In the comments, Philocrites, a.k.a. Chris, shows me where I’m wrong. I reply, admit he’s right, and try to recover my balance. Although I still say you should vote for one of the other Republican candidates.

Theological humor from a humanist

The recently deceased Kurt Vonnegut was a humanist, that is, he did not believe in God. On a number of occasions, Vonnegut riffed on his disbelief in witty and thought-provoking ways.

During one interview, Vonnegut told this story:

I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association… I succeeded Isaac Asimov as president, and we humanists try to behave as well as we can without any expectation of a reward or punishment in an after life. So since God is unknown to us, the highest abstraction to which we serve is our community. That’s as high as we can go, and we have some understanding of that. Now at a memorial service for Isaac Asimov a few years ago on the West Coast I spoke and I said, “Isaac is in heaven now,” to a crowd of humanists. It was quite awhile before order could be restored. Humanists were rolling in the aisles.

“Knowing What’s Nice” from In These Times, 6 November 2003. Link.

But in 1999, he told the story differently. This is from the book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian:

I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great, spectacularly prolific writer and scientist, Dr. Isaac Asimov in that essentially functionless capacity. At an A.H.A. memorial service for my predecessor I said, “Isaac is up in Heaven now.” That was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. It rolled them in the aisles. Mirth! Several minutes had to pass before something resemble solemnity could be restored.

I made that joke, of course, before my first near-death experience — the accidental one.

So when my own time comes to join the choir invisible or whatever, God forbid, I hope someone will say, “He’s up in Heaven now.” Who really knows? I could have dreamed all this.

My epitaph in any case? “Everything was beautiful. Nothing hurt.” I will have gotten off so light, whatever the heck it is that was going on.

(I love the way he throws in that wry “God forbid.”) In 2006, he proposed another, different epitaph for himself:

No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC.

“Vonnegut’s Blues For America,” Scotland’s Sunday Herald, 5 February 2006. Link.

So of course the article isn’t really about his epitaph at all, it’s about how the rest of the world perceives the United States. A few paragraphs later, Vonnegut wrote: “Foreigners love us for our [blues]. And they don’t hate us for our purported liberty and justice for all. They hate us now for our arrogance.” The epitaph, in other words, isn’t for Vonnegut so much as for the increasingly theocratic United States.

But analyzing Vonnegut’s humor is like analyzing one of Louis Armstrong’s solos. If you gotta analyze it, you’re never gonna know.

Axiocentrism, whatever that is

Browsing the articles at the excellent Religion Online Web site, I came across a 1979 article about Unitarian Universalism by Robert Tapp. It’s fascinating to read an outsider scholar’s view of our denomination, written at the moment when we were about to start growing (very slowly, but growing at last instead of declining). I found the second-to-last paragraph especially interesting. While we haven’t seen that theological convergence with humanism, the emergence of liturgical innovations in the 1980’s (flaming chalice, joys and concerns, etc.) makes the comment about feeling and acting like a minority group seem prescient. And the idea of “axiocentrism” just might be useful in our ongoing attempts at defining ourselves:

What of the future [of Unitarian Universalism] — if we assume that membership shrinkage has stabilized, that fiscal stringencies have been effected, and that a theological convergence toward a religious humanism has not only occurred but has at last received official recognition? A possible pattern is that of the Quakers — smallness, integrity and influence. But the Friends’ ethos and ways are difficult and must be learned — a kind of orthopraxy. A pattern of orthodoxy — precise beliefs, precisely enforced — seems even less likely. A third communal pattern could be based on shared values, both explicitly and implicitly religious — an “axiocentrism.” This model seems to characterize today’s UUs. Many of these shared beliefs and values are by-products of modernity and higher education. To the extent that U.S. culture is now tilting toward conservatism, those who hold such values may come to feel and act like a minority group — which seeks mutual support, recognizable in-group styles, viable defense patterns.

Full article: Link.