The Third Path in Religion: Unitarian Universalism

David Hobart Hunter

Unitarian Universalist Church of Loudoun

March 7, 2004

I discovered recently a fascinating website. Of course, I may be the last one on the block to hear about it. It’s called BeliefNet, and it’s filled with information about various religions and religious topics. They were doing a poll of those who visited their site. They asked, “Can good people outside your faith tradition attain salvation as you understand it?” Answering that one didn’t take me long. Yes, of course, they can. Explaining how Unitarian Universalists understand salvation might take longer, but we certainly don’t claim a monopoly on salvation, whatever it is.

Then I looked at the possible answers for their multiple-choice question:

(1) “Yes, [good people outside my faith tradition can attain salvation] fully, if they are sincere in their attempts to know or worship a deity.” [57%] No, that’s not my answer; as far as I’m concerned you don’t even have to believe in a deity, let alone worship one.

(2) “Yes, [they can attain salvation,] but not fully.” [3%] That response is even more restrictive.

(3) “No, [they cannot attain salvation,] but they are not punished.” [1%] Such generosity of spirit that answer exhibits! We won’t punish you if have the misfortune not to be part of our group.

(4) “No, [they cannot attain salvation,] and unfortunately, there are consequences.” [29%] What these consequences might be is left to the imagination of the respondent, but presumably they are not pleasant.

(5) “I don’t know.” [9%]

My answer, the simple “yes,” was not on the list. This suggests to me that there is something distinctive about Unitarian Universalism. It also suggests that this was a poorly designed question.

This morning I want to discuss Unitarian Universalists in the context of two groups of neighbors.

On one side of us are the unchurched, those who do not participate in any religious community, for whatever reason. Many would accept the label of secular humanist. But others could be characterized as spiritual individualists. They view themselves as having a spiritual life, perhaps they even accept traditional Christian doctrines, but they see no need to be part of an organized religion. Some of them will have had unfortunate experiences with religious communities. Others of them will have had no experience with organized religion at all.

On the other side of us are liberal Protestants. They may be members of a variety of different denominations – United Church of Christ, Episcopal, Methodist, and so on – and they are at the liberal end of the spectrum within their denominations. Now, you could just as well be using liberal Roman Catholics, liberal Jews, liberal Buddhists, or liberal Muslims. But Unitarianism and Universalism both come out of Protestantism, and for that reason I see liberal Protestants as our closest neighbors.

In the middle, between the unchurched and the liberal Protestants, are we, the Unitarian Universalists. My question this morning, is how do we, as Unitarian Universalists, differ from liberal Protestants and the unchurched?

I suspect that both liberal Protestants and the unchurched would have difficulty with the BeliefNet salvation question. Liberal Protestants would probably respond as I did, though perhaps not as quickly. My guess is that many of the unchurched – the secular humanists – would reject the concept of salvation. Presumably none of the unchurched would tie salvation to membership in a faith tradition, since they would be excluding themselves from salvation. But perhaps my approach is too rational.

I have, myself, been part of all three groups: one third of my life a Presbyterian, one third of my life unchurched, one third of my life a Unitarian Universalist.

I grew up in Michigan, in suburban Detroit, in a Presbyterian family. My great grandfather had been a Presbyterian missionary in rural northern Michigan; my grandparents were founding members of their Presbyterian church, in Lansing, Michigan. Perhaps it was because I took religion seriously that in my adolescent years I started asking difficult questions about the concepts and doctrines of Christianity. Asserting my independence, I moved away from the Church and, in college, sought to find the answers to fundamental questions in the study of philosophy.

Coming of age in the 1960s, I could hardly ignore the issues of civil rights and the Vietnam War. While I left behind my anti-war activism with the end of that war (and this is not the occasion for me to share with you my feelings about Mr. Bush’s war against Iraq), I pursued civil rights as my career.

As a young adult, it did not occur to me that my lack of involvement in a religious community left a serious hole in my life, or that a faith was available that would both respect my rational approach to religious questions and reinforce my commitment to social justice (and, as a bonus, reawaken my passion for church music). Through the good fortune of marriage I was introduced to Unitarian Universalism and gradually recognized that I had found a spiritual home.

That’s enough autobiography. Let’s get back to my question: what sets Unitarian Universalists apart from liberal Protestants and from the unchurched?

An obvious hypothesis is that what sets Unitarian Universalists apart are our theological views. Certainly you are more likely to find atheists, agnostics, humanists, and neo-pagans in a UU congregation than in a Methodist one. But in either congregation you will find, if you do some digging, a remarkably broad theological spectrum. And as I suggested earlier, you will find considerable theological diversity among the unchurched as well.

Let’s go back for a minute to the BeliefNet website. In addition to information concerning all different religions, with many helpful links, and with advertisements that enable them to pay the bills, BeliefNet offers a variety of quizzes. One of their quizzes, Belief-O-Matic, is intended to help you figure out which religious group you may feel comfortable with. There are 20 questions, some on theology and some on social issues.

I was relieved to learn, when I saw my score on Belief-O-Matic, that I was a one hundred percent fit with Unitarian Universalism. But I was also a 99% fit with Secular Humanism and not too much lower with Liberal Quakers (88%) and with Mainline to Liberal Protestants (84%).

BeliefNet, by the way, for the purposes of scoring this quiz divides Protestants into only two groups: Mainline to Liberal Protestants and Mainline to Conservative Protestants. If they had made further divisions, my fit with liberal Protestants would presumably have been even higher.

I resemble liberal Protestants even though my response to the God question was:

No God or supreme force.

Or, not sure.

Or, not important.

And I resemble liberal Protestants even though my response to the what-happens-after-death question was:

No afterlife;

No spiritual existence beyond life;

No literal heaven and hell.

Or, not sure.

Or, not important.

In the time that remains I would like to describe four factors that I believe distinguish Unitarian Universalists from liberal Protestants on the one hand and from the unchurched on the other. Let me warn you that this is not based on empirical research, and I don’t claim to have hard and fast distinctions – tendencies would be the most I would claim. Some of the four factors will distinguish us more from liberal Protestants, others more from the unchurched.

The four factors are:

1. first, our open approach to religious and theological questions,

2. second, our identification of the key religious issues,

3. third, our optimism, and

4. fourth, our attachment to religious community.

First, with respect to the Unitarian Universalist open approach to religious and theological questions, I would note three features–

(a) We are committed to the use of reason,

(b) We believe that revelation is not sealed, and

(c) We accept theological diversity.

We are known for our use of reason. This has been an identifying feature of Unitarianism from the start. It’s also been present in Universalism, but without the same prominence. Certainly we do not have a monopoly on the use of reason, but it stands out more for us than it does for others.

Our use of reason informs our understanding of the Bible. We can mine the Bible for its stories of imperfect and fallible humanity and for humankind’s attempts to come to grips with why we’re here, but we look in the Bible more for stories than for commandments, more for questions than for answers, more for poetry than for science.

And certainly we recognize – at least I hope we recognize – the limits of reason.

When the brand new widow, in tears at her late husband’s hospital bedside, asks, “Why did Harold have to die?” she’s not looking for an explanation of the etiology of colon cancer or for a disposition on the role of death in evolution. No: let’s hold her hand and murmur something sympathetic and soothing.

When we look at the stars on a clear night, away from the lights of the city, we can give thanks for creation without focusing our minds on the chemical composition of the stars or the laws of planetary motion.

Another feature of our open approach to religious and theological questions is our declaration that revelation is not sealed. That’s a line from Samuel Longfellow’s hymn, which we sang earlier, “revelation is not sealed,” [Singing the Living Tradition, #190, Samuel Longfellow, “Light of Ages and of Nations”]. To the extent that God speaks to humanity, God did not stop talking with the death of Jesus’s apostles. We would go further and acknowledge that God is not the only source of revelation. We learn from nature and experience. We never stop learning; there are always new ways to see things.

This openness to new ways of seeing things leads, not surprisingly, to our acceptance of theological diversity. We are eclectic and proud of it.

We are enriched by the presence among us of those who see Christianity as providing their religious scaffolding, as well as by the presence of those whose theological house is furnished with great restraint, with no need for entities at a higher level than humanity, and no need for a method beyond that of science.

We are enriched as well by those who would metaphorically personify the earth and the forces of nature. Thus you may recall that a few years ago, we added as a source of our living tradition “Spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.”

Let’s move on now to the second of the four factors. Not only can we Unitarian Universalists be distinguished from others by our open approach to religious questions, we can also be distinguished, secondly, by our identification of the key religious issues. We strive to come to grips with the threefold reality that–

(a) We are alive;

(b) We will die, and

(c) We are a part, and only a part, of the web of all existence.

So many people seem to behave as though they were unaware of these realities, these quite obvious realities. These are the realities that are fundamental to religion. Which of the various creeds of Christianity is accepted doesn’t really matter. Whether Islam or Hinduism has the better approach to the nature of God doesn’t really matter. Let’s get down to the core issues.

You are alive. What are you going to do with your life? You won’t be alive for ever. What are you going to do with your life? You’re not the center of the universe. “What is it you plan to do,” in the more eloquent words of Mary Oliver, “with your one wild and precious life?” [Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day,” in New and Selected Poems (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), p. 94]

This is not something that a six-year-old can understand, or a sixteen-year-old. But adults should eventually have the maturity to face up to their place in the great scheme of things, and it is the responsibility of faith communities to help. The purpose of life is not to earn the most money or to have the most sex or to prepare for the next life.

Moving right along, we’re ready now for the third of the four factors. Not only can we Unitarian Universalists be distinguished from others by our open approach to religious questions and by our identification of the key religious issues, but we can be distinguished from others, thirdly, by our optimism.

What I do not mean, is that the future will automatically be bright, that Some One up there will set everything straight. No, what I mean is that we have a lot of hard work to do – work that requires courage and sacrifice, work that requires both thinking outside the box and engaging in old-fashioned politics.

We are cautiously, realistically, and perhaps foolishly optimistic. I see this optimism in three areas:

(a) We are optimistic in our view of human nature,

(b) We are optimistic in our attitude toward the universe, and

(c) We are optimistic in our stance towards salvation.

With respect to human nature, “we covenant to affirm and promote . . . the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” That we as humans have worth and dignity is not an empirical statement; it is not a conclusion that we would expect sociologists to make. Rather, it is a way of looking at the person next to you – or the person on the other side of the world. It is a hope, an aspiration. We believe that if we look deep enough into the eyes of another person, no matter who they are or what they have done, eventually we will find worth and dignity. We believe, to use a different metaphor, that we are all created in the image of God. [Gen. 1:26-27] We do not believe that the act of Adam and Eve in eating the forbidden fruit has condemned humanity [Gen. 3], that their between-meal snack has separated humanity from the love of God.

With respect to the universe, we consider it a friendly place. Again, this is not an empirical statement. If it were, the obvious response would be, “compared to what?” But that’s the point, it’s the only universe we’ve got, so let’s try to get along with it, to co-exist – especially with our little corner of it. We know that it won’t last forever – nothing will, and that’s OK – but let’s not speed up its demise. If we treat our world with respect, we can have a home in it for a long, long time.

With respect to salvation – that’s what the question I started with was about, salvation. What can a Unitarian Universalist say about salvation? Let’s see.

Whatever salvation may be, I would argue that it doesn’t count as salvation if some are left out. How could anyone enjoy heaven knowing that some had been sent to hell? If God really created a two-tier system, with the favorites being welcomed to eternal bliss in heaven and the others being condemned to eternal fire in hell, then the only decent response for humanity to make is to go on strike. No one should accept entry into heaven unless all can go there.

But our salvation, if we are to have one, is in this world, not in the next one. We may not know what happens after death, or agree on what comes next, but the salvation that concerns us is here, not there.

We won’t have salvation here, we won’t have reached the Promised Land, we won’t have created the Kingdom of God on earth until everyone is included. This is for both moral and practical reasons. Morally, how can we justify exclusion? Practically, this is a small world, an increasingly small world. If you think that AIDS in South Africa, civil war in Sudan, despair in Haiti, discrimination against women in India, nuclear weapons in Korea are irrelevant to the well-being of Americans, think again.

Salvation may be here rather than there, but we need to acknowledge that we’ll never be able to say, “we’re done now, we’re finished.” No matter how much progress we make, no matter how just, peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable our world becomes, there will always be room for change.

I’ve reached, finally, the fourth of my four factors. Not only can we Unitarian Universalists be distinguished from others by our open approach to religious questions, by our identification of the key religious issues, and by our optimism, we can also be distinguished from others, fourthly, by the importance we attach to religious community. Being a Unitarian Universalist, I would argue, implies being part of a religious community: you can’t be a solitary UU; you can’t do it all by yourself. There are three reasons for this.

(a) Being a Unitarian Universalist implies being part of a religious community because of the importance we attach relationships,

(b) Being a Unitarian Universalist implies being part of a religious community because of our commitment to look out for one another, and

(c) Being a Unitarian Universalist implies being part of a religious community because of our recognition that only collectively can we be a force for good in the world.

As members of a religious community, we are in relationship with others. We share ideas with each other; we argue about ideas with each other. We hold each other accountable, both intellectually and for our conduct. If Bob makes a weak argument, Joan will set him straight – gently, of course. If Jack is neglecting his family, Bob will talk to him about his responsibilities.

As members of a religious community, we look out for each other. We visit the sick; we take food to the bereaved; we provide rides and child care. This week, I may take a casserole to you; next week, you may bring one to me. But we know it may not come out even; we don’t keep score. When a newcomer arrives, we don’t try to calculate whether they will give more than they will receive.

But let me pause here with a cautionary note. We celebrate the inclusive community, with members interacting with each other and providing aid and comfort to each other. But some people don’t play by the rules, and sometimes, in extreme cases, our response to fellow members must the protective exercise of tough love. If someone threatens the safety or survival of the religious community, we must be prepared to tell them that they are no longer welcome among us. We believe in worth and dignity, and thus we believe in individual responsibility. Some behavior is not to be tolerated. By being prepared to expel members I mean having established procedures, with due process, for expelling from membership and attendance those who are threats to our safety.

As members of a religious community, to return from my digression, we can combine our voices, we can combine our resources, we can reinforce each other’s morale, and thus we can be a force for good in the world. Individually, we are weak and ineffective; collectively, we can be strong.

Now, when I speak of a religious community, I have in mind primarily the local religious community, the congregation. But I also have in mind the continental community consisting of all the Unitarian Universalists across the country. I hope that wherever you go, you can drop by the local UU society on Sunday morning and feel welcomed, feel immediately at home.

And beyond that, I want to feel that I am part of a religious community that exists across time, that when I worship I am sitting with those who worshiped, 200 years ago, with Joseph Priestley and John Murray, that I am sitting with those unknown people who will be worshiping in Unitarian Universalist congregations in Virginia two hundred years from now.

There you have the four factors that, as I see it, distinguish Unitarian Universalists from liberal Protestants, on the one hand, and from the unchurched, on the other:

1. first, our open approach to religious and theological questions,

2. second, our identification of the key religious issues,

3. third, our optimism, and

4. fourth, our attachment to religious community.

I would like to conclude with a fifth difference, which I suspect may be the most important of all.

We who are already Unitarian Universalists have been welcomed by a UU religious community. There are others out there who have not found us yet, who have not received that welcome.

There are others who have just learned through the Belief-O-Matic quiz that they would have a good fit with Unitarian Universalism, and who are wondering who we are and how to connect with us. Let us let them know that we are here, and let us welcome them through our doors and into our community and into our hearts. Amen.