Burning Answers

Martha Hodges - 2006-08-27

Today I’m taking on the challenge of trying to answer questions about whatever’s on your minds. It’s good to know what’s on your mind. I only received seven questions, but, boy, are they juicy ones. Each one, including Mary Kathryn’s question about God, deserves at least a sermon of its own. But I’ll do the best I can to share a few of my thoughts on each. Each of these questions would also make the topic of a great congregational conversation, but since we only have the usual 20 minutes or so, I’m going to save just the last question for you to answer.

The first question reads like this: We have a banner in front that says we are “people of faith.” What constitutes the faith? Where does “faith” fit in the context of Unitarian Universalism?

On one level, the use of the word faith in this UUA slogan is a bit disingenuous. The UUA, I think, is claiming that, as a religious institution on a par with other, more conservative denominations, we have a certain moral authority, equal to that of churches that have taken a contrary religiously-based stand on the issue of same-sex marriage.

The other implication is that the proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as heterosexual is a violation of the separation of church and state—an attempt to make one religious tradition—the conservative Christian tradition—the law of the land. By asserting that ours, too, is a religious faith with equal rights before the law, we protest the imposition of any one religious agenda on all Americans.

But this question is really asking something much more fundamental. Is Unitarian Universalism a “faith?” And if it is, what is it we claim to put our faith in? It’s an excellent question. Can you have a faith if you don’t have a creed? If we welcome Christians, Jews, Pagans, Muslims, atheists, agnostics and people of pretty much any “faith” or no “faith,” how can we call ourselves a people of faith? My answer is that we can’t if we define “faith” narrowly as a set of religious beliefs, or a creed.

Nor can we claim to have a faith if we understand faith solely as belief in what cannot be observed or proven or understood by reason— as the fallback position for irrationality or superstition that reason and science refute—as in, a leap of faith. As in, “Science may tell us that the world was not created in six days, but my faith tells me otherwise.”

But, as with so much traditional religious language, it all depends on definitions. My personal understanding of “faith” is the ability to depend on something greater than the self. I have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow. In other words, I have faith in the laws of nature that govern the movement of the stars and planets. By extension, since these laws are both mysterious in origin and essential to life, I have faith that there are forces and phenomena that are beyond human comprehension or control and upon which we are totally dependent for existence. Faith in something transcendent, if you will. Not necessarily something conscious or self-conscious. Not something necessarily benevolent or capable of thought, emotion or intention, but something on which I can depend, nevertheless.

As a group, is there anything that Unitarian Universalists can claim as a common faith? Or do we each have our own little separate faiths? This is the big question that UUs struggle with, as individuals, as congregations and as a denomination. My own answer to this is, yes. I believe that we have a shared faith—a dependency on—certain things: the human potential for goodness; the power of creativity and reason and compassion—the human capacity to love—to be our salvation as a species and as a world. I think we share a faith in the interdependent web that connects all beings and all beings to the earth, and therefore, a shared faith that we are responsible for and to one another and for the health of the planet. I think we share a faith that we are children of the same source, and therefore related in love and mutual care and responsibility to all others, regardless of nationality, race, sexual identity or orientation, gender, age, religion or abilities. And that this connectedness calls us to certain kinds of action, to acts of conscience founded on love.

So that’s my short answer to what makes us a people of faith: We are a people who believe in mutual connectedness and love—and depend on these to make life possible and to give it meaning.

What about “feminism”? Domination of women seems to be a core of all fundamental religions. However, the word feminism still seems to be unpopular in the USA.

The word “feminism” has fallen on hard times. It drives me crazy when I hear a woman say, “I’m not a feminist, but… I believe in equal opportunity for women, or the equality of the sexes...” or whatever. Especially when I hear this from a young woman who may be studying engineering or the law or medicine. Because I do hear this most often from women who were born after the second wave of feminism in the 1970s and seem to have little understanding of the struggles of their mothers and grandmothers to secure them the rights they now enjoy. I think “feminism” is a scary word to a lot of women because it has been co-opted by anti-feminists. It suggests man-hating, or, god forbid, aggressiveness. It sounds threatening to both men and women, especially to women who are afraid of being found unappealing to men. It invites ridicule or dismissal.

Especially these days, I fear. Which brings me to the other part of this question, about the role of religion. It’s no coincidence that our culture professes increasingly conservative social ideas about conformity and authority and “family values” as defined by anti-feminist, anti-gay agendas at the same time that the Religious Right has gained ascendancy in our country.

Religions—all religions—get used, to further social and political agendas and to justify abuses of power. It’s no coincidence that the three Abrahamic religions describe a god envisioned as a powerful father figure. But a distinction has always to be made between religious teachings and the teachings about religion. Between the religion and the institutions and traditions that grow up around it. The scriptures of the world’s dominant religions do contain teachings about the oppression and control of women, it’s true—but these are balanced in these texts by examples of the opposite view. The problem is that scriptures are mined by people in search of justification for all kinds of actions—oppressive policies as well as generous and just ones. As long as we continue to look to religious texts to find support for hateful attitudes and actions, we will find them.

Is the world getting better or worse?

Is the idea of “getting better” (or “progress”) a Western construct and an artificial one at that?

If so, on what do we base our “hope for the future”?

This came out sounding a lot more despairing than I meant it; my question is more along the lines of “how do we think about this?”

I suspect that the idea of “progress” is not only Western, but fairly modern, dating from the Age of Enlightenment, when all seemed possible. In our nation’s history, this faith in progress was bolstered by Puritan beliefs about being the instruments of God’s will and convictions about salvation, and later by Westward expansion—remember Manifest Destiny?—by capitalism, technology and industrialization, and by the rise of the middle class. The rise of Unitarianism fit right into this context of optimism, with its ideas about “salvation through character” and the perfectibility of humankind.

So, if all this is true, this person asks—if belief in progress is culturally determined, does this mean progress is less than inevitable? And if it’s not an inherent part of our human natures or the inevitable product of evolution, can we, or should we, have hope for the future?

I know that I’m less confident about our world’s future than perhaps UUs generally are, perhaps less confident than many of you. I agree that, if we measure progress by the amount and severity of suffering in the world, there may be cause for hope. But it’s too easy to assess “progress” from our unrepresentative position of relative ease. We live in an affluent society, even if we ourselves are not affluent; we have rights that are protected by law, if not always enjoyed in reality. It’s easy to forget how untypical our relatively easy lives are of the larger world. When I look at the hardship in Third World countries, of people at war, or even at our own urban centers or rural South or Appalachia, I find it hard to be confident of our social progress. Here in the US, most of us enjoy running water and access to antibiotics. We’ve seen advances in racial justice, even though Katrina has reminded us all of how far we have to go in this area. Women and GLBT people enjoy greater status and acceptance in mainstream culture than ever before, even though hate crimes and legal discrimination persist. People of the modern world know more about other ways of life, about science. We have a more complex view of the human experience and this ought to help us make wiser choices.

Here’s my problem with this viewpoint. While the general standard of living of the world may have improved, I don’t see any change in our essential human nature. I read the paper and watch the news. We humans are as capable of brutality now as we were one thousand or five thousand years ago. The other day I heard an historian say that more people died violently in the twentieth century than in any previous century with the possible exception of the thirteenth. And he wasn’t talking about absolute numbers, but numbers proportional to the respective populations of these eras.

So what is the basis of the hope we proclaim? The problems of the world (with the exception of natural disasters) are created by humans. As human-made problems, they are subject to human-made solutions. If we broke it, we can fix it. The challenge is to find the will to do so, and this can happen if we teach our children well. So while progress is not inevitable, neither is defeat. At times—recently—it seems likely to me that if global warming doesn’t kill us eventually, war will. Of course, in the longer view, aren’t we supposed to collide with the sun? That sort of puts progress in perspective. But for all intents and purposes, yes, I have hope that it isn’t too late to make a different future—one of peace and justice and sufficiency for all—if the human species sets its formidable collective mind to it. I don’t have much faith in human progress to date, but I do have faith in its possibility.

As a minister, do you think there are any differences between supporting the spiritual needs of affluent people and the spiritual needs of people who are struggling financially or who are very poor? What kind of spiritual guidance do affluent people need? Are poor people seeking a different kind of spiritual guidance?

I suspect that the spiritual needs of the affluent and the poor are the same, but that they may seek different means of satisfying them. I think all people need a sense of security in the world, a sense of belonging, of being loved and appreciated and valued. A need for a sense of purpose. I see two differences, however. Remember Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Unless basic needs for food and shelter are met, needs for companionship and meaningful work can’t be addressed. Unless these latter are met, needs for beauty and self-actualization—spiritual needs—can’t be met. So the spiritual needs presented to a minister may depend on the circumstances of the person’s life.

The other difference I see is that the poor and the affluent tend to have different ideas about their locus of control. The poor, realistically, see that many conditions in their lives are not in their hands. The relatively affluent are more likely to believe in their own power to affect the course of their lives because they are more likely to possess such power. It makes sense, then, that the poor person—the less powerful—may be more likely to find consolation in the idea of an omnipotent god who will ultimately reward her suffering after death. A minister may need to respect this belief while encouraging her to take action in behalf of her own happiness and to resist succumbing to feelings of helplessness. She needs to be reminded of her inherent worth.

For a person with more resources, the minister may actually have to take the opposite tack and encourage him to relinquish the illusion that he controls everything that happens in his life—to let go of an exaggerated sense of individual efficacy. This feeling that everything depends on him can result in extreme loneliness and self-blame. This person needs to be reminded of his dependency on others and—perhaps for different reasons—to be reassured of his inherent worth, just like the poor person.

When the UU General Assembly or the MVUUF votes in favor of taking a position on a matter of conscience, what are the implications for an individual UU who does not believe in or support this position?

To elaborate, should the individual:
1. Accept the will of the majority and support the position
2. Continue to speak out against the position
3. Be silent on the position to avoid friction within the group
4. Resign his or her membership
5. Other?

You can’t support a position you don’t believe in. You may choose to remain silent if you decide that the benefits of speaking out are not worth the cost to you. On the other hand, in matters of personal integrity, you may need to continue to speak out for your position, either because you perceive some chance of changing other people’s minds or simply because your conscience and self-respect demand it. It’s a question of weighing costs and benefits—practical, psychological, social and spiritual—and of choosing your battles accordingly.

As for the last option – resigning your membership… We all have a bottom line. There are some moral issues we can’t compromise on and some that are so much a part of who we understand ourselves to be that we can’t remain a part of a group that disparages or invalidates our point of view. But these issues, I would hope, are few and far between in our congregations. In a healthy congregation, people accept that not everyone will agree with them on all things and they can disagree while remaining present. In a healthy congregation, people can disagree without disparaging each other. We’re a diverse group, held together by respect for that diversity and even appreciation of the way that our differences enrich us and challenge us to grow in wisdom.

(Congregational Response)

What do we do here that is worth the time and money we put into it?

This is a question that each of you has to answer for yourself. You have different spiritual and social needs and different ways of meeting them. What do you think?