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Someone
once asked the great American pioneer Daniel Boone if he had ever
gotten lost. Boone said that no, he had never in all his explorations
been lost. But then, he paused and added that there had been a few
times when he had been mighty confused for two or three days.
Sometimes, people who are on the outside looking in at our
particular religious movement might get pretty confused about what they
see. A woman was once invited by her Unitarian Universalist neighbor to
visit her church one Sunday, and she did. After the service, the
neighbor asked her friend what she had thought. “Oh!” the visitor
exclaimed, “I disagreed with half the things the minister said!”
“Great!” her friend replied, “you’ll fit right in then!”
But some people don’t see it that way. How, they ask, can you
have a church that is based upon the idea that there is no single
agreed-upon truth (except, that there is no single agreed-upon truth)?
How can you have a religion that says that it’s about the journey, not
the destination—deeds, not creeds—and that the important thing is for
everyone to search for himself or herself, and try to live according to
the beliefs they develop for themselves? How can you have a church
where some people believe in God—and others do not. Where some people
call themselves Christian—and others do not. Where some members are
(even) Democrats {gasp}—Republicans (gasp)-- and others are not. It
might all seem quite strange to someone more accustomed to something
more conventional in religion. It might seem like a sort of religious
Tower of Babel.
Sometimes, frankly, it
might seem that way from the inside, too. Like we’re building things a
bit too high. As though we’ve risen too far from our foundation, too
far from our base. As though we’ve all started speaking different
languages, and no longer have a common vocabulary of faith that unites
us; no longer have, perhaps, any real reason to be working on building
this tower together. Why don’t we each just build our own towers and
leave it at that?
Sometimes, it’s easy to
get mighty confused, if not downright lost, amidst all of the
diversity, along all the divergent roads, which this church represents.
Sometimes, we might be forgiven longing for a more fixed beacon of a
staid and steady faith.
This is especially
true in these rapidly changing times in which we live, where there is
so much importance attached to “branding”—on knowing what your
“message” is and sticking to it—on knowing what the product you’re
trying to peddle is, and to whom you are trying to peddle it. The
danger of spreading ourselves too thin over too wide a demographic
would seem apparent. If we try to appeal too broadly to just about
everyone, then we can lose focus, and end up appealing to nobody in
particular. But if we narrow things down too much, then we run the risk
of doing very real damage to what we truly are about.
None of this, of course, is especially new to our Unitarian
Universalist story. (Here commences the history lesson for today. You
have been warned.)
Samuel Atkins Eliot was
one of the great men of American Unitarianism in the years around the
turn of the 20th century. He was certainly one of our movement’s
leading organizers, and was an important force in transforming the
American Unitarian Association into a cohesive national denomination,
and not just a collection of individuals and societies.
When he was just a young man—still in his twenties—Eliot left New
England and traveled way out west—to Denver, Colorado—to become
minister of the thriving new Unitarian church there. It was perhaps the
most lively congregation with which Eliot would ever be involved; but
the young man really didn’t really appreciate his new church in Denver
very much. So he wrote a long letter to his father back in
Massachusetts (who was the president of Harvard, by the way), bemoaning
his fate:
“I was right in supposing that
this was more or less a Godless church,” the younger Eliot wrote.
“Except for a nucleus of some dozen old Unitarian families [from back
home] the church is made up of iconoclasts, agnostics, and ethicists… a
few Jews, some Ethical Culturists, some Ingersollites, a number of
recently converted [Catholics] and some people to whom religion means
free trade and a [uniform tax code]. They want lectures, not
sermons—information, not religion. The [Sunday] congregation averages
400 up {Why was this man complaining?} It is composed of many of
the leading business people of the city… Socially, the people are
plain, middle class folk, plenty of money in the church, but no style.”
Now, admittedly, Eliot was a young man when
he went to Denver, and young ministers always have a lot to learn. (Old
ministers always have a lot to learn, too.) But consider, if you will,
the implications of this letter. As early as 1889, when it was written,
there were already thriving and diverse Unitarian churches in our land,
and the future president of our association was fortunate to have been
called to serve one. But even he didn’t appreciate the power and
vitality and potential of such a church. Even Sam Eliot—intelligent and
capable chap that he no doubt was—didn’t grasp that the diversity and
dynamism represented by that church in Denver would become, over the
next century, the dominant characteristic of liberal religion in
America, Thos diversity would, in effect, become our “brand”. But what
Eliot was still longing for was the staid and solid Unitarianism he had
grown up with in Boston (which Ralph Waldo Emerson had called the
“corpse cold Unitarianism of Brattle Street” a few years before). He
longed for a church cut from the same cloth that other churches were,
perhaps; maybe a little more liberal, maybe a little more intellectual
in its approach, but basically the same. He longed, too, for a church
made up of his own kind of people—of people who shared his own sense of
“style”; people who thought like he did; people drawn from his own
(extremely privileged) social and economic class. Samuel Eliot felt
threatened by what he encountered in Denver. He didn’t want a church
that was a sort of Tower of Babel.
Now,
what relevance does this stroll down memory lane have to us today, as
we consider our own church’s future, and try to discern how to keep
this church afloat amidst the changing tides of the times in which we
live? Certainly, diversity like that found in that church in Denver is
now the norm in most UU congregations today, even right here, in our
little church in Stoughton. (We probably even have a few permutations
of belief and outlook that people of Eliot’s age couldn’t even have
imagined.) As churches go, it is our diversity which distinguishes us
from others; it is, perhaps, the predominating fact of life within our
church.
So, it seems to me that, however we
decide to proceed in the years ahead, that how we learn to live with
(and share) our diversity will determine, to a large extent, the
success of whatever efforts we undertake.
Thriving amid
diversity does not mean suppressing what each of us believes and
accepting some lukewarm status quo. We will not grow as a church by
becoming the Lowest Common Denomination. We will not find
enlightenment along the spiritual path by simply accepting second hand
all the beliefs of others. No, that’s how we become confused and lost,
overwhelmed in the sometimes conflicting currents we can find in a
church like ours.
Thriving amidst diversity means neither
accepting in total what everyone else believes, nor believing nothing
at all. It means holding fast to what we believe—each one of us,
affirming what our own experience, reason, and intuition tell us is
true for us—but always remaining open to the insights and inspirations
that others have to offer us. It really is like a dance (or like a good
marriage). We each have our own steps to take, but always in
concert—always in relationship—with those with whom we dance.
I
am convinced that we were brought together here, all of us, for a
reason. Whether that reason was cosmically-inspired or not I can’t tell
you fur sure (I have my opinions, but they’re matters of faith, which
cannot be proven.) But I do know that there is a deeper purpose for
which this church should survive, and I do know that we all have things
to learn from each other, and things to teach those who currently stand
outside our doors. The only way we activate that purpose and make it
come alive is by treating others not as forces outside ourselves, but
as integral parts of our own spiritual journeys. We need each other if
we are to grow spiritually. Our communities need us, and we need them,
as well.
However this church decides to proceed in the days
ahead, something I know that we need are more opportunities just to
talk with each other, to talk and to share why we’re here; where we
came from to get here; where we see this church going. We need to
schedule more experiences like the “Brainstorming for Survival” forum
we’ll be having after the worship service today. We need more small
circles, where people can come together to share their stories-- their
insights into this wonderful spiritual adventure we are on together. We
all need opportunities to speak, and to listen to what others have to
say. Ministers, especially, need times to listen. We have to make sure
everyone’s voice can be heard. That’s how we stay in touch with the
heartbeat of our church, and can best judge its overall health.
I
guess it is tempting for a minister to want a congregation that thinks
and feels always the same way he does, or she does. That sees things
from the same vantage point; that reacts to the world in the same way.
It can be tempting, I guess, especially in a church as diverse as ours
is. Being a Unitarian Universalist minister has been compared both to
herding cats and to nailing Jell-o to the wall, and both are apt
analogies, it seems to me, sometimes.
But is that what I’d
really want? A church where everyone thought the same way I do, and
believed the same things, and voted the same way {well, maybe that
one!}No, it sounds like a prescription for boredom, if the truth be
told. Boredom—and stagnation—and a kind of living death.
For
if we are sometimes confused, we are not lost. And sometimes, we see
even more amazing things along the ways of our detours than we do along
the well-maintained superhighways of our lives. That was true for Sam
Eliot in Denver, and for Daniel Boone wandering around the wilderness
somewhere, and for us, trying to find the best road into the future.
Deep
down, we would agree with Emerson that, while we wish sometimes to be
settled, we know that only so far as we are unsettled is there hope for
us. The Spirit—Emerson said “God”, and so would some of us—The Spirit
offers us the choice between Truth and Repose. “Take which you please,”
Emerson said, “but remember: You can never have both.”
If Sam
Eliot were here at our little Unitarian Universalist church in
Stoughton this morning, he might still be shaking his head at what he
saw: “iconoclasts, agnostics, and ethicists… a few Jews…” (even a few
Christians, too). To which we could add Humanists and atheists, and
pagans and Buddhists, and, yes, “a number of recently converted
[Catholics] and some people to whom religion means free trade and an
[expanded recycling law].” Some want lectures; some like sermons—some
want spirituality; others religion; and all of us dream of a world that
is just and fair.
We are just plain folks, and we have
our own “style”-- whatever Sam Eliot might think. This little church,
this little collection of fellow pilgrims, facing the future together,
our way lit only by a faith united and universal—inspired by (to
paraphrase Stephen Vincent Benet):
“this dream
This land unsatisfied by little ways,
Open to every one who brings good will
This peaceless vision, groping for the stars,
Not as a huge devouring machine,
Rolling and clanking with remorseless force…
But as [a living church upon a]
living earth
where anything [could happen and]
anything could grow.
May we be bold enough to envision great things for our dear church.
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