Unitarian Universalist Sermon

Title: Unitarian Universalism and Our Roles in Religious Acceptance

Author: Skip Freidhof

Date: 02.04.06

This sermon is actually the second most important thing that I have to do today. The first, as those of you who know me will have probably already guessed, starts at 6:30pm tonight, watching the Steelers play in the Super Bowl. Watching the Steelers, a tradition for almost everyone who’s from Pittsburgh, is usually one of the few times where relatively mild mannered Skip turns into Skip the nutso, raving maniac. It becomes all about “us vs. them”, whoever is playing against the Steelers is the enemy and every messed up play is either a chance to revel in Steeler accomplishment or scream and yell at the incompetence of the team’s botched efforts. Now just so you know, as I stated earlier I am usually a fairly calm individual, in fact my favorite sport is golf, which could otherwise be known as the anti-football. It’s the sport where you are expected to be a gentleman or a lady, and you’re expected to be supportive and sometimes downright sympathetic of your fellow competitors. This is the sport where honor and integrity are such an integral part that you are actually also expected to call penalties on yourself. Not so in football! In football it is absolutely an “us vs them” power struggle where the most dominant, aggressive, controlling and strategic team is declared the winner at the end of the day.

AND WHAT, you might ask, does this have to do with being an accepting congregation. Well, the thing about it is, the temperaments of these two sports reveal quite a bit about our propensity as human beings to react to situations in differing manners. I find that it is sometimes easy to take an “us vs them” approach to things within our daily lives. As a matter of fact, it’s usually pretty easy for any group to use the words “us and them” to create a teammate-like situation in which a bond of combined forces is presented as a stronger way to defeat the teams adversaries. It’s sometimes more challenging to create and sustain an environment based on the concept of “we” and to truly live up to the demands that this concept places on us.

Now, when it comes to golf, the mindset is quite a bit different than the football mindset. You are still sometimes competing with others, but in general, the real competition is first and foremost against yourself and the golf course. Golf is a game of inner-demons, of self-confidence, of trust in yourself to be able to gather your resources together and execute at times when self-doubt and pressure are bearing down on you. It’s also a game of camaraderie and integrity, a game where playing it is often just as important as winning, and where contrary to what is shown on TV during tournaments, “we” is usually more important than “us vs them” – we of course, being the people that you get to spend several hours walking around with as you try to chase away the inner demons and enjoy the great outdoors.

It takes effort and it takes mutual respect to create this environment of “we”. It takes realization that playing the game and sharing each other’s company is in fact, sometimes much more important than winning, than achieving your own personal goals at the expense of others, or taking an attitude of victory at all costs. And ultimately, it’s also much more important than “us and them”.

I have a theory – the theory is that the activities of some religious organizations, along with those of certain politicians, over the last decade or so have done a great deal of harm to religious choice. Recent events have created an environment where it sometimes becomes easy for those in power and those with strong media support to promote an “us vs them” mindset which they have sometimes used to further their own personal agendas. The use of football analogies often abound in their vernacular, the idea of winning the big one, the idea of might is right, the use of the word victory to describe religious beliefs – that one especially, gets to me - and the idea that their way is the only way.

Well, I’m sorry, but though I like sports, I realize that life is not a sporting event and the use of sport’s related examples to explain life are sometimes just wrong. Kind of like the recent delivery service commercials, I don’t know if any of you have seen these, but they feature prominent football players running into an office and telling people who work there to stop using inappropriate sports analogies when describing business activities that have nothing to do with sporting events.

And so, with this in mind what then, can open-minded, liberal religious organizations do to provide an alternative to self serving, one-sided religious views that are vigorously promoted as the one and only way to believe? In other words, what role do liberal religious organizations play in today’s society that provides a truly valuable alternative to one-dimensional thinking.

Well, how about the idea of becoming an accepting alternative, one that offers a more reasonable interpretation of religious beliefs and an inviting environment to those who have become disillusioned by the directions that are being taken by many modern religious organizations.

As Unitarian Universalists we are the folks who are accepting of people with diverse beliefs and viewpoints, and who offer an open-minded religious experience for people regardless of their religious beliefs or their personal views on issues.

This acceptance of differences and respect for others views and opinions makes us somewhat unique. And this acceptance really all starts at home – home in this context meaning our congregation.

I have heard of our small congregation being compared to a family. Well, I don’t necessarily think this is true, after all families can be dysfunctional, families can be estranged, and family’s can be held together just because they have to be. We, on the other hand CHOOSE to be together, we CHOOSE to share in our own personal journeys and we CHOOSE to share our personal experiences with each other. We respect the opinions, feelings and viewpoints of each other, a thing that oftentimes is not found in a lot of families. We also respect each others beliefs and don’t REQUIRE each other to conform to our beliefs. In other words, we ARE the accepting alternative, and only by being that accepting alternative can we truly realize our potential for living up to our seven principals.

Now, at this point I’d like to bounce around a bit and tell you a story of someone who struck me as being an extraordinary individual. Unfortunately I don’t remember the man’s name – which is a shortcoming of my memory rather than his deeds.

Anyway, I heard about this individual on Nightline one evening, he went to Iraq to help people. What I found out about him on that broadcast was that he was a Quaker and he was being held captive, along with others, by a radical group who were trying to make their own particular statement to the world. This story was being told by the man’s daughter, who by the way seemed to be pretty amazing in her own right. The story focused on the fact that her father HAD no agenda in going to Iraq other than a desire to help people who were in desperate need of help. As I listened to her tell his story I became captivated by it. This was the story of a man who felt that it was more important to travel halfway around the world to one of it’s most dangerous places to help people who were suffering, rather than worry about his own personal safety and well being. He wasn’t going there to convert people, he wasn’t going there to liberate them, and he didn’t concern himself with political or religious ideologies. He didn’t look at the world in terms of “us and them”, or “good guys and bad guys”, Christians, Muslims or Jews, he only saw that there were people who needed help and he felt that it was his responsibility as a human being to do what he could to help them.

The actions of this individual are a true expression of what personal beliefs are all about. They are an example of what it means for someone to live out their own personal religious beliefs on a daily basis They are not some TV Evangelist telling people what to believe or what not to believe, they certainly are not some guy standing up here telling stories about football and golf. They are rather, the actions of someone who really gets it, someone who understands the big concept of “we” and lives out his personal beliefs, and they are, quite frankly, pretty humbling.

Now, my goal with this sermon has been to explore the idea that liberal religious organizations have a responsibility to offer an appropriate, accepting alternative to one-sided theology. To achieve that goal we first need to take a look at what it means to be an open-minded, accepting congregation and at how we can provide a more welcoming environment for those who are searching for alternatives to religious organizations that do not promote tolerance.

First, religious acceptance, as the name implies, requires latitude.

Religious acceptance requires us to be inclusive of varying viewpoints and ways of believing, even if we don’t necessarily agree with some of those viewpoints. After all, if we all thought alike and had the same exact opinions, then we wouldn’t exactly be very open-minded and we certainly wouldn’t be a truly accepting organization

As an accepting and open-minded religious organization we CAN sometimes be a target for people who wish to label us as lacking of true religious convictions, especially those who consider their way to be the only way. I think that they fail to see that the possession of true religious convictions really means that you are willing to listen to and learn from others, and as a result become more enlightened by virtue of expanded knowledge and more criteria on which to base your own views. As an alternative religion it is our responsibility to offer people an environment that promotes open discussion and the exploration of personal religious beliefs, that’s what enables us to separate ourselves from other religions.

That’s also what makes us welcoming to those who are searching, searching for more meaning in their lives, searching for somewhere that enables them to explore their own religious beliefs without being disrespected, or maybe just searching for a community that they can feel comfortable being a part of.

The bottom line is that we are an accepting alternative because we are Unitarian Universalists, and that’s what we do.

We really do have something very special to offer. We offer acceptance, as I’ve mentioned quite frequently, but we also offer diversity, we offer community, and we offer the potential for spiritual exploration in a welcoming environment. We need to remember and embrace these things because these are our strengths as a congregation. And we also need to remember that “we” as a community and our potential for “we” as an expanded community is much greater and more valuable than “us and them” can ever be. After all, people who are sitting on a fence in terms of their beliefs, people who have become disillusioned by the aggressive and assertive stances that their religious organizations have taken on controversial issues, are more likely to turn to an organization that provides an open ear and a somewhat more centrist approach to spiritual journey’s, than to one that is just as narrow minded as their previous religious organization. And so we need to use the idea that we are a welcoming and accepting community as an advantage and extend this outward to others who are searching. It all really starts here!

With that said, I’d like to leave you with this thought - it seems to me that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to get too caught up in the hype. Things are certainly not always the way that conservative media evangelists and political pundits would like us to believe they are. Keep in mind that it is in their best interests to promote narrow-minded religious opinions in a way which makes THEM look like they’ve got all the answers. In reality, I think that they are misleading their followers, Christianity, after all, is MORE about embracing the concept that people have the ability to find meaning in their lives by improving the way that they treat and interact with others, than it is about following the one righteous path or being sentenced to eternal damnation. Think back to the man I mentioned in my earlier story, a lot of supposedly “devout people” might say that he was being irresponsible by placing his life in such UNNECESSARY danger, but at the same time, others would say he was doing what he thought was right – or as my grandmother used to say “he was doing the Christian thing”. This is where I think that Christianity and Unitarian Universalism really DO have very strong common threads– they both tend to focus a lot on the idea of community, both local and global, and on the idea of searching for true meaning.

So let’s continue to create an environment of acceptance, an environment of “we” rather than one of “us vs them”. These are the types of ideas that we need to continue to embrace as Unitarian Universalists because they are the TYPES of ideas that show us that the world is better if it is viewed as a journey together rather than as an adversarial contest.

But for now, speaking of adversarial contests, I need to put an end to this sermon so that I can get Ready for Some Football!

So, Amen and ... Go Steelers! (I hope that’s not too opinionated or controversial)