OUR PECULIAR WAY OF BEING RELIGIOUS
A SERMON BY REV. ROBERT M. EDDY, M.Div.
delivered at The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Miguel De Allende
11 November 2000

Four years ago when I was interim minister in Indianapolis I preached three sermons on UUism. I asked and answered three questions. 1. Is religion a social disease? 2. Is UUism a Religion? and 3. What is our peculiar way of being religious. I’m going to try to answer all three questions in about twenty five minutes this morning.
I felt it necessary to ask the first question because there were there may be here those who agreed with Didrot, the French revolutionary. Who wrote, about 230 years ago, Men will never be free until the last king is strangled in the entrails of the last priest.
That is not my attitude. I recognize that power elites throughout history have used religions (plural) to enlist the masses in their own subjugation. I also recognize that religion (singular) has often been the way in which courageous leaders have mobilized the oppressed to throw off their shackles. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are examples.
What is this strange characteristic of our species that can be used both to oppress and to liberate? Here’s my definition: religion is the response of the deepest strata of human being to the exigencies of temporal existence.
On the individual level religion is what we do with our consciousness that we will eventually die, that ours is apparently a temporal existence. On the sociological level a religion is a social expressions of a particular culture’s answers to the questions religious people ask. Why am I here? Why do I suffer? What is virtue? Why do the wicked prosper? and other such radical questions that go to the root of the meaning of life.
Most individuals accept with relatively little thought the majority religion of their culture. In fact for many that religion defines their culture. They say, Iran is a Moslem Republic or The United States is a Christian nation an assertion which you could hear proclaimed from many Christian pulpits this morning. Of course, we know that America is not a Christian nation. The United States is a nation in which many religions can coexist with none receiving the imprimatur of the state.
Is UUism, one of those religions?
Well, six years ago the Unitarian Universalist Association launched a marketing campaign with the slogan,
UUism: The religion that puts its faith in you.
The British Unitarian Association prints bookmarks which say, Unitarianism, the creedless religion which says that people ought to think for themselves.
If you dial up the UUA web site - UUA.ORG - and click on the link, What is Unitarian Universalism? You’ll read Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religion, born of the Jewish and Christian traditions. We believe that personal experience, conscience and reason should be the final authorities in religion.
Now if one could cram four plus centuries of history into a few words, any of those brief statements might do. It’s true; we do put our faith in people. It’s true: we do believe that people ought to think for themselves. It’s true: we believe that personal experience, conscience and reason -not revelation - should be the final authorities in religion. But all three of these summaries have a fatal flaw. You see Unitarian Universalism is not a religion, and for that I thank whatever gods or goddesses may be.
The world does not need another religion. What the world desperately needs is a better way for people to be religious. And that’s what, I believe, UUism is: a better way to be religious. UUism is a way that enables diverse individuals to be honestly religious in community.
Each UU is developing his or her own unique religion, a religion built out of his or her own unique individual life experiences and his or her rational reflection thereon. We do not share a religion; we do share a very unusual - in fact a rather peculiar way - of being religious.
My religion is not Unitarian Universalism. If I were to give my religion a name I might call it Bob Eddyism or better Bob Eddyism year 2000, October 13 at 11:07 a.m. My religion is constantly evolving - as is yours. My religion is unique; as a UU I don’t have to accept anybody else's religion to belong because UU congregations practice a way of being religious that is very different from the ways found in of all other religious communities. What is that way? More than a century ago Edwin Markham, a Universalist poet, wrote:
He drew a circle to shut me out;
Heretic, Rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win.
We drew a circle that took him in.
That little quatrain expresses the essence of our way of being religious and what I have to say from here on out is simply an exposition of what Markham wrote. I’ll do this in two ways: first by contrasting our way of being religious with four other ways and secondly suggesting three important characteristics of this way of being religious
What are some other ways of being religious?
The first way of being religious is the Shaman’s Way,
The second way of being religious is the disciple’s way.
The third way of being religious is the orthodox Way
The fourth way of being religious is the Latitudinarian Way.
I do not view these other ways of being religious as without merit or more primitive than our way, but I do believe with all my heart that our peculiar way of being religious is a better way.
Like the UU way of being religious, each of the other ways of being religious has been expressed both positively and negatively. And each of these other ways of being religious has contributed to our institutional history, but none of these is our contemporary, way, the UU way of being religious:
The first non UU way of being religious is the Shaman’s way.
THE SHAMANS WAY
A shaman is a person who believes he or she has a message directly from the God or a god or goddess The Shaman hears a voice feels compelled to say, Thus Saith the Lord.
In the Jewish traditions these shamans were called Prophets. The shamans of the ancient Hebrews - like the shamans of non-literate societies today - heard a voice; sometimes a still small voice, sometimes a roaring from the whirlwind but a voice nonetheless; a voice that ordered them to proclaim The Word of the Lord.
The history of Religion is filled with people who believed they had heard the voice of God, or a god or goddess and they felt compelled to speak truth to power - nearly always to the dismay of the religious establishment of their day. Examples could be drawn from all the world’s religions (1). The Shaman’s way is found in every religious tradition, including our own (2).
There are literally thousands of women and men today who practice the shaman’s way of being religious. The best are traditional Quakers. The worst are some of the so-called Charismatic Christian preachers. In between are there are many new age channellers.
So much for the first way of being religious: the shaman’s way.
Lets look at a second way of being religious:
THE DISCIPLE’S WAY
The shaman says, Thus says the Lord. The disciple says, My shaman, my guru, my spiritual master says, Thus says the Lord and I believe him - or her. This way of being religious is also common in history and today. Jesus’ twelve disciples - well eleven of them at least - practiced the disciples way. We have seen the negative expression of this way of being religious in cults like the Branch Davidians or the followers of Jim Jones or the disciples of the Japanese guru who ordered his disciples to produce and plant nerve gas in the Tokyo subway. But there are positive expressions of this way of being religious too. Look at what the disciples of Gandhi and Martin Luther King accomplished in their times. But the disciples way is not our way of being religious.
Nor is, the orthodox way, a third way of being religious, our UU way.
THE ORTHODOX WAY
The shaman says, Thus says the Lord. The disciple says, My shaman, my guru, my spiritual master says, Thus says the Lord and I believe him - or her. The orthodox say, The disciples of our shaman wrote that our shaman said Thus says the lord and we believe them.
Those who practice the orthodox way of being religious insist that revelation is sealed. They make of one shaman person the last, the ultimate, shaman. Islam is a good example. Bahai is another. Christianity is a third.
Instead of trying to hear the same voice which their shamans heard, the orthodox take the teachings of a shaman as written down by his disciples or their and use those writings as a guide for believing and acting.
Our way is not the orthodox way though Unitarianism and Universalism both started out as orthodoxies. Both claimed to be the only correct interpretation of words of disciples of Jesus of Nazareth.
Now, several positive things can be said for the orthodox way of being religious:
1. Through a common set of beliefs, rituals and religious authorities it allows a disparate collection of individuals to come together as one people. Avoiding alienation and narcissism.
2. The orthodox way is often the means by which a people survive when under attack. Orthodox Judaism is the most venerable example. It has enabled the people Israel to survive for twenty-five centuries. Catholicism in Poland is an example from recent history.
3. The orthodox way of being religious gives scope and shape to the creative impulse. How much poorer would we be without the music of J.S. Bach or the paintings of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel.
But there is a pathology of the orthodox way of being religious about which I can say nothing good. It is called Fundamentalism.
Fundamentalists say not only that that their prophets proclaimed the truth. Fundamentalists also say, Any one who does not believe as I do is evil and should be denied the rights that we enjoy. Fundamentalism is found in every orthodox religious community. We read of examples of Christian and Moslem Fundamentalism in the newspapers every day but Gerry and I in our thirteen months circumnavigating the planet, that Fundamentalism exists in Shinto, in Hinduism, even in Buddhism.
Fundamentalism is a cancer on the soul of orthodox religion. It must be distinguished from more common, more tolerant, forms of orthodoxy.
We Unitarian Universalists need to join hands with the tolerant orthodox of all religions in fighting Fundamentalism. To lump the tolerant orthodox with fundamentalists only does harm to the causes both UU’s and tolerant orthodox persons support. The orthodox are sometimes our best allies. The fundamentalists are our common enemies.
There is much to say for the orthodox way when it escapes the temptation of Fundamentalism. But the orthodox way is not our way. (3)
There is a fourth way of being religious. I call it:
THE LATITUDINARIAN WAY
Shamans say, Thus says the Lord. Disciples say, our shaman says the lord’ thus says the Lord and I believe him – or her. The orthodox say we believe what the disciples wrote.
Latitudinarians say, We too believe what the disciples wrote, but what they really meant was ......
Practitioners of the latitudinarian way of being religious take a tradition and stretch it to mean something the thoughtful individual can believe though he or she disbelieves the literal content of the tradition.
A Latitudinarian can say Oh yes, I believe in God , but by God she will mean something very different from what the questioner assumed. The ground rules for Latitudinarians, is, don’t ask and don’t tell. A Latitudinarian Christian is able to say the Apostles Creed without believing in the literal resurrection of the dead or even in a transcendent god. Latitudinarianism is a way of avoiding intellectual indigestion while sitting at a great feast with the orthodox. Episcopalians do this with great style (4).
Much good can be said of the Latitudinarian way of being religious, but Latitudinarianism can be dangerous to one’s integrity. When I was a Methodist minister I practiced Latitudinarianism every day. Eventually I came to experience myself as a hypocrite and I left the Methodist ministry. Most latitudinarian clergy in orthodoxy churches do not have the problem I did. The do not experience themselves as hypocrites. They feel latitudinarianism serves higher values. They say, After all, in these matters it’s all metaphor, anyway. They may be right and I certainly do not accuse my latitudinarian friends of hypocrisy. However the latitudinarianism way is not the UU way of being religious.
So far I’ve been defining our way of being religious negatively - by saying what it is not. Now I will be more positive and say what it is.
Our hymnal contains literally dozens of attempts to describe succinctly Our Way of Being Religious. Let me lay out yet one more vision of what the Unitarian - Universalist way of being religious really is, in positive not negative terms.
I can describe it with three adverbs - yes, adverbs for religion is a verb. The proper question is not, What is our UU Religion? . The proper question is, How are we religious?
PART II
HOW ARE UU’s RELIGIOUS?
We are religious inclusively, dynamically and covenantally.
1. THE UU WAY IS INCLUSIVE.
Ours is a way of being religious that cherishes, celebrates and cultivates diversity. Each UU states what he or she believes as clearly and unequivocally as possible. It is proper to say many UU’s believe this way or that way, or that most UU’s believe this way or that way, or that few UU’s believe this way or that way. It is never proper to say or imply that all UU’s believe the same way.
If you study Unitarian and Universalist history you find many in each generation rejecting the things believed by most of the previous generations of Unitarians and Universalists and since 1962 of the previous generation of UU’s. It is so even today. Most of us came into the movement in the 60’s We challenged the theism of our elders with our non-theistic humanism. Within a few years we non-theistic humanists were in the majority. Now that we are elders, our non-theistic humanism is being challenged by pagan UU’s and post modern Christian UU’s. So has it always been. So, I hope, will it always be.
Every religious community has its doubters, its heretics. What distinguishes our way of being religious from most others is that we do not expel our heretics. That is a most significant difference. That is what has made us what we are today: fellowships of tolerant - well mostly tolerant - seekers who practice their diverse religions honestly in community. We have kept our heretics and learned to cherish them- well most of them.
That’s the first characteristic of our way of being religious that I’d like you to remember - We are inclusive.
Historically the first characteristic led to the second characteristic. Because our institutional ancestors did not expel their doubters, our way of being religious is dynamic
2. THE UU WAY IS DYNAMIC
We UU’s are always moving on. There has always been resistance to this moving on. There have been and there always will be, I suppose, those who say, We’ve gone far enough; there are certain fundamentals that must be believed for a person to become or remain a member of our religious community.
Let me give you just one historical illustration: In 1886 a Unitarian minister, Jabez T. Sunderland circulated a pamphlet among his colleagues in response to a proposal which another Unitarian minister, Rev. Gannett, had made at the previous annual meeting of the Western Unitarian Conference. Gannett’s proposal was that belief in God should no longer be required of Unitarian Ministers. Rev. Sunderland was horrified. He wrote:
Is Western Unitarianism ready to give up its .Theistic Character? Are we ready to declare that those great [beliefs]: in God, [in] prayer, [in] immortality and [in] the spiritual leadership of Jesus, which have always in the past been at the very heart of Unitarianism, [Are we prepared to say that these] are no longer essential to our movement? ... Rev. Gannett tells us that the denomination first took its stand on reason and revelation, but it had to move on. Later it took its stand at the supernatural or the miraculous; but it had to move on Later still it made another stand at the Lordship of Christ, but again it was compelled to move on. Now the stand is made at Christian Theism, but once more, he says, we must move on. Move on where? If I am faced toward the edge of Table Rock, Niagara Falls, I can safely move on for a distance - move on until I am within 20 feet of the edge, 15 feet, 10 feet, 5 feet, one foot - but if I move on much beyond that it will be the last moving on I shall be likely to do in this world.
Well, for better or for worse, we did move on. The Western Unitarian Conference said that it would let each individual decide whether the edge is really Niagara or simply a new embarkation point. They refused to eject any minister on the grounds that she or he had gone too far out in front of the majority. The same thing was happening in the British Unitarian Association. In the printed version of these sermons I will include some additional illustrations of this tradition but I too must move on to my final point.
To review: The UU way of being religious is not the shaman’s way, not the orthodox’s way, not the disciples’ way not the latitudinarian’s way.
Our way is first of all inclusive. We do not expel dissenters. Our way is, secondly, dynamic; we are always moving on.
And, finally, our way is covenantal.
3. THE UU WAY IS COVENENTAL
Our predecessors in this way of being religious, sought the good the true and the beautiful as all religious person do; but they did not do it in isolation. They didn’t go sit under a tree and wait for inspiration. They were members of a religious community. They committed themselves to one another through a covenant (5).
Some of you are old enough to remember ads that used to be run by the Unitarian Layman’s League headed, Are You a Unitarian without Knowing it? Many people are UU’s in the sense that they do believe in diversity and tolerance but at a safe distance. These people answer, Unitarian when asked by pollsters for their religious affiliation but they do not belong to a congregation.
I have come to believe that one can’t really be without belonging to a UU congregation. Until one makes a commitment to a religious community and participates in it’s life, he or she isn’t really practicing our way of being religious. Her or she is just admiring it. You see, I believe that our way of being religious requires commitment to community.
When I entered the Unitarian Universalist ministry thirty-six years ago, I gloried in the practice of having our membership book available every Sunday and inviting even first time visitors to sign if they wished. I now believe that was a mistake, an overreaction to the exclusionism in which most of us were raised. The result of this attitude has been the revolving door syndrome. Do you know what I mean by the revolving door syndrome? It’s where people join, stay a year or two then disappear while a core group stays on for years maintaining the bearings upon which the door revolves. Eventually they die or wear out and the congregation collapses. Hundreds of thousands of adults joined our churches stayed a few years and then dropped out. We made membership insignificant so people disjoined as easily as they had joined.
I think of church member - ship in the Victorian sense. In those long gone days, the word “member” was used to indicate a part of the body. Becoming a member of a Christian Church meant becoming part of the body of Christ, a serious decision indeed. In the Jewish tradition, becoming a member of the congregation as an adult is an even more thoughtful and sometimes painful decision. Joining a UU congregation should also be a serious decision. One should, I think, spend at least as much time deciding to join a UU congregation as one would spend choosing a new car.
More and more of our congregations now require informed consent before allowing a person to sign the membership book. They make a great effort to be sure that all who join know what they’re getting into. They know the difference between a member and a friend. I approve of this trend.
But I don’t want to give the impression that everyone who attends services or participates in other activities of the congregation are not welcome. We certainly need all the friends we can get but there should be a crucial difference between being a friend of the congregation and a member of the congregation.
A member is one who has accepted the covenant that defines the congregation.
In many religious communities, the covenant is handed down from the ancestors or from some central authority. Unitarian Universalist covenants are crafted by each congregation - and renewed periodically. The Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations is encouraging every congregation to reexamine its covenant or to write one for the first time. I encourage you to undertake that process.
A covenant is something different from an affirmation of things generally believed among us - such as the UUA principles and purposes. That is also a useful document but the covenant is far more important. A covenant is what we promise one another. It deals more with behaviors than with beliefs.
A UU congregation should be something more than a gathering of individuals; something more than an audience for a preacher, something more than a debating society. A Universalist congregation should be a loving Community of honest, tolerant and caring individuals who in the words of Shelly Jackson Denham’s hymn believe in life, and laugh and sing and dance together.
If you agree, say with me the words to the verses and then sing lustily each of the choruses. The number in your hymnal is 354. Anne, would you play the music for the choruses for those who are not familiar with this music.
We laugh, we cry, we live, we die; we dance; we sing our song.
We need to feel there’s something here to which we can belong.
We need to feel the freedom just to have some time alone
But most of all we need close friends we can call our very own.
And we believe in life, and in the strength of love, and we have found a need to be together.
We have our hearts to give. We have our thoughts to receive; and we believe that sharing is an answer.
A child is born among us and we feel a special glow.
We see time’s endless journey as we watch the baby grow.
We thrill to hear imagination freely running wild.
We dedicate our minds and hearts to the spirit of this child.
And we believe in life, and in the strength of love; and we have found a time to be together.
And with the grace of age, we share the wonder of youth, and we believe that growing is an answer.
Our lives are full of wonder and our time is very brief.
The death of one among us fills us all with pain and grief.
But as we live, so shall we die, and when our lives are done the memories we shared with friends, will linger on and on.
And we believe in life, and in the strength of love And we have found a place to be together.
We have the right to grow. We have the gift to believe.
that peace within our living is an answer.
We seek elusive answers to the questions of this life. We seek to put an end to all the waste of human strife. We search for truth, equality,
and blessed peace of mind
And then we come together here,
to make sense of what we find.
And we believe in life, and in the strength of love And we have found a joy in being together. And in our search for peace, maybe we’ll finally see; [that] even to question truly is an answer.
1980, Unitarian Universalist Association
Amen, let us make it so.
(1) For example, several years ago, when my wife and I were traveling in Japan, a Japanese friend introduced us to the Oomato sect of Shinto. It had been founded by a poor peasant woman who believed she had heard the voice of one of Shinto’s gods, telling her to proclaim an anti-nationalist anti sectarian, anti war message. Her followers began the study of Esperanto and sought fraternal relationships with religious groups in other nations. As a result, during the Tojo regime, which tried to turn Shinto into a nationalistic religion - rather than the nature religion it has been since ancient times - they were persecuted.
(2) Nor is shamanism absent from the history of the Unitarian and Universalist Churches. Unitarian minister Ralph Waldo Emerson considered Jesus a true prophet. But Emerson was a Shaman with a difference for he believed that every human being is potentially a shaman. He believed that everyone can hear the voice of the Divine and proclaim it. A significant number of the Unitarian ministers of Emerson’s day began to do just that - to the dismay of their congregations and majority of their colleagues. These transcendentalist ministers believed they heard the voice of God demanding, for example, they resist legalized slavery and other injustices of that day. For more information See The Transcendentalist Ministers: Church Reform in the New England Renaissance by William R. Hutchison, 1959, Beacon Press
(3) Some UU’s treat the UUA, Principles and Purposes , as a creed - the hallmark of Orthodoxy. It is important that we understand the difference between, statements of Things generally believed among us and preconditions for joining a UU congregation. For more on this see below
(4) There is a very real danger of confusing our way of being religious with the Latitudinarian way., when we use the old traditions - from Jewish, Christian, or Native American sources. When we stretch those words so that they no longer express what they meant to their authors, we are not honestly honoring diversity. We’re saying, It’s not really different from what I believe therefore it’s o.k..
(5) We have lost the seriousness with which our Pilgrim ancestors viewed their covenanting together. Perhaps it’s because in 2000 there’s little if any danger in belonging to a community with such a weird covenant. But we should remember that many of our institutional and spiritual ancestors died at the stake because they would not abandon their covenant to seek the truth together.