Tread Softly

I began this month outlining the virtues of living with a free faith, Last week I urged that we live out the promise of this free faith by loving boldly, so what's this treading softly stuff? If I'm an evangelical Unitarian Universalist shouldn't I be urging churches I serve to light their signs with neon and purchase vans to scoop up neighborhood children and deliver them to First Hour? I do believe Unitarian Universalism could be on the brink of growth. There is a need in the land that we can fill. This open, welcoming religion which encourages people to freely choose their faith, that provides a place for people to be together in covenantal relationship offers the promise of transforming society. But could we handle the growth? There is the danger that we will once again get in our own way! This faith movement is rooted in dissent. We have never stopped dissenting nor believed that revelation is sealed. Dissenting can get to be a habit.

We trace our theological roots back to Origen's struggles in the early church, the Arian heresy which prompted the Council of Nicea, and the Radical Reformation. Like all reform movements, each wanted only to get back to, be closer to the pure truth. The tradition continued on this continent were Charles Chauncey's opposition to the intense revival sweeping New England in the late 18th century foreshadowed the Unitarian controversy and was articulated as a positive set of ideas: a commitment to logic and reason in theology; a biblicism that was strict but demanded critical and historical analysis, and an overriding concern for moral aspiration as the focal point of the Christian religion.

Early Universalists adopted, in 1803, the Winchester Profession of Faith. This Universalist creed included belief in revelation of the bible, the final restoration of all souls, and the affirmation of good works. It defined Universalist belief for over a century - see, we haven't even ALWAYS been non-creedal. Even with a common creed, John Murray, father of Universalism and his successor, Hosea Ballou quarreled bitterly over the difference in their theological positions (Judith Murray, "doctrine preached here today not the doctrine ordinarily preached from this pulpit.")

At the same time the Unitarians were engaged in their own struggles. First they attempted to remain within the Church of the Standing Order, but accommodation was no longer possible after William Ellery Channing's 1819 Baltimore sermon, which introduced rational Christianity. That sermon marked Unitarian movement away from biblicism and divinity of Jesus, And they'd no sooner made the move to acknowledge being Unitarian when the transcendentalist controversies surfaced. Here in north America, the nineteenth century was a period of intense theological disagreement within the ranks of those who had recently separated themselves from Christianity.

After the Civil War both Unitarians and Universalists began to further distance themselves from Christianity, to speak of universal appeal. But quarrels persisted, more between ourselves, Universalists and Unitarians, and then Unitarian Universalists, than with Christian Protestantism. At least one group of ministers, seeing themselves as non-creedal and post Christian, struck out on their own, to form the Free Religious Association. Most of them returned to the fold, perhaps the forerunners of not only 20th century religion on an ethical rather an theological basis but of the recognition that we can become more inclusive rather than exclusive.

For several years after the merger, in 1961, dissension in the new Unitarian Universalist Association focused on just or right social action rather than theology - the Vietnam war, civil rights. After those movements had ceased, or peaked, we got returned to matters theological. Dissenting is habitual. Footprints of all this quarreling have stunted our growth Convocation is continental gathering of ministers to consider matters larger than church growth and administration; for example, -our understanding of the holy. They are held about every ten years. I'll be attending my first, perhaps only, in March. In journals and on chat lines ripples from the last one continue.

Humanist ministers took poorly the news that Unitarian Universalism has become decidedly pluralistic and actually began to regard themselves as a persecuted minority. I was surprised and sad to see, at General Assembly 1995, a minister walking around with a "kick-me I'm a humanist" sign on the back of his shirt. What a good example of how a predominate theology can become revered as The Truth, ignoring context or other events/thoughts that swirled around it, or spun off from it. We are continually evolving as a religious people. We are more than one era. We represent more than one point-of-view.

As I said earlier this month, I like the place we've landed as the Unitarian Universalist Association enters its fifth decade, a place where personal responsibility is in the context of a caring community in which we treat each other with love and respect. A caring which encourages us to continue to examine and live our free faith. I am relieved that we see ourselves as religious people, as people of faith whose faith requires them to step out of themselves, roll up their sleeves and work in the world. The blatant intellectual arrogance in the 60's I experienced, the Christian bashing from the pulpit, is now only an undercurrent but one that gets in our way. At least it can get in my way. One of the valuable lessons from my Clinical Pastoral Education experience was having Rabbi Silberman, the supervisor, call me on my sense of personal omnipotence. We tend to think we can do, be all that's needed in all situations.

I am glad that there is more recognition that we have good news for the world and are spreading our liberating theology more freely. It's a tricky business - being evangelical Unitarian Universalists and not adopting an attitude of superiority! Recently a long time Unitarian Universalist told of her struggle with the reality of her raised Unitarian Universalist children becoming adult Pentecostal. "I've discovered," she said, "a lot of intolerance in my tolerance."

I'm suggesting that we have to hold all of this in tension: our saving message is right for us and right for many others who don't know we're an option but that doesn't make it better than any other faith traditions. This is where we tread softly. We recognize that since we don't have a name, someone else's name may be as good as our un-name. We think about the single gem of our faith with all its facets: Confucian wisdom, Christian care, Muslim prayer: from many lips in every age the truth eternal is proclaimed. Theological diversity makes a strong web when we are open about our sense of the holy and respectful the perspective of the person sitting next to us.

We have too long a history of squabbling among ourselves to be critical of others. We have the way for some but aren't the religious answer for all. Our way is one way but it's far from the only way and who are we to say it will meet the needs of everyone? We need to remember that footprints come in all sizes, what people have ever wanted from church, sense of belonging, sense of purpose, contact with something larger than themselves, for some that fits the lasts of Unitarian Universalism while for others the last is smaller, larger, wider, more narrow.

Need to understand is a very basic human need that so many of us in Unitarian Universalist congregations struggle with. We miss the boat when we are critical of biblical creationists because, however desperate we may find their arguments, their unwillingness to see that which upsets their world view are not ground for our smugness but for our compassion, because we are in the same boat. We, too, struggle with the frightening presence of the unknown. We, too, ask "Why?" when the question me need to ask ourselves is, "How shall I live with this?" It is our response that meaning is then possible. Perhaps it's a bit too much to ask that we embrace the fearful, unknown, that we can always be able to love it, but we can strive to recognize mystery as an everyday presence in our lives.

Fran Dew August 26, 2001