The Core of Unitarian Universalism

In an introductory conversation with a visitor or someone curious about UUism, we are likely to speak about the freedom inherent in our style of religion.

That notion is novel enough so that by the time we've said some things about our diversity-- in theology or understandings of death, say, the visitor starts to wonder why we get together at all and what, if anything, holds us together.

If the conversation continues, it probably will founder next on the simple assertion of a contextual morality.

You mean you don't believe in the Ten Commandments? invariably leads to the sequence: "Well, that means you can do anything you want. What's to stop you from going out and killing someone any time you wish? Or stealing anything you want?"

What stops us from misbehaving is obviously something much more profound than a list of dos and don'ts of an ancient tribe of nomads.
Equally, what keeps our congregation together is something more like a magnet or a kind of gravity than a set of beliefs or a particular theology.

It is quite subtle and remarkable--and profound.

With the help of several my UU minister colleagues and my own experience, let me give you my understanding of that glue, or gravity.

Charles Howe, retired UU min now in NC, uses the metaphor of the core of Unitarian Universalism.

As he recognizes, the "core" is not a particularly rich or aesthetic metaphor--not like tree, or stream or web are.

I thought to use "heart" but neither the image of the "pump" or the "feeling" gets at it in the way "core" does.

What is the core of Unitarian Universalism?

Think apple core not the core sample taken from the earth or the glacier - it needs the sense of life and vitality that comes with the apple image - an image that is also, if I may say, deliciously scriptural.

The core of Unitarian Universalism is the life-giving, growing, flexible seedbed for the on-going vibrancy of our faith.

It is what provides strength, vitality and longevity to our still heretical religion.

John Beuhrens, past president of our association of congregations and someone who has had the opportunity to think hard about this question, focused it this way.

He referred to the underlying dynamic of our faith tradition as being something we do not have to create--it is a given to which we connect.

In the same vein, British historian Gilbert Murray noted that human beings' deepest beliefs, which constitute real religion, are those things we act on without question, without thinking.

They are the givens of our own spirit.

Around the core of our UUism are the people, you and I, the congregations, the institutions which relate to it and are affected by it--which have surrounded it from the beginning.

They/we are glued to each other through our connection with the core, through the "gravity" its weightiness produces.

Contemporary theologian Sam Keen describes it in general "when he observes that each stated religion, with its beliefs, rituals, customs, stories, myths, and symbols, rests upon an underlying base, 'an unconscious, habitual way of seeing things, an invisible stew of unquestioned assumptions...'"

Do we have unquestioned assumptions?
Let's see.

Strands of the core go back a long way.

Back to the early church fathers (Arius & Origen), back to the Greeks (Protagoras & Socrates), back to the Hebrews and the Prophets.

But it isn't really ours until the 16th Century with Michael Servetus, Francis Da-ved and Fautus Socinus and the founding of the Unitarian church in Transylvania (where Harold is now, I gather).

During the 16th, 17th, & 18th Centuries the influential issues were primarily focused on theological concerns arising from reinterpretation of the Jewish and T'n scriptures.

In the 18th and 19th Cent, with the founding of the Universalist church here in the United States, the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason created new issues which influenced our faith.

Influences from scientific materialism, German Biblical criticism, Eastern philosophies, Romanticism and Darwinism found their way into our movement through the likes of Joseph Priestley, Jefferson, Emerson, Theodore Parker, Olympia Brown.

Their thoughts and deeds became rich seeds in the core.

The 20th cent. brought a host of new forces and issues with which Unitarians and Universalists had to wrestle: the World Wars, the Bomb, the Depression, the Holocaust. Then Civil rights, women's rights, gay & lesbian rights, the space age, the computer age, humanism, existentialism, Pagan thought & practice, ecology, Buddhism and other Eastern religious practice, fundamentalism, and the rise of spirituality.

The latter examples each had spokes persons in our movement.

Through their words and deeds, these issues have become woven into our faith even as the people changed or passed away.

Charlie Howe predicts that some of the issues in the coming century will include space age cosmological theology, the role of consciousness in the universe, and earth-centered spirituality.

But what he reminds us of, and we surely know, is that the core is not defined by theology.

He also reminds us that the core is not several other things we cherish today.

The consensus in my last congregation in PA was that what was really at the heart of the church was the community that comprised it.

They were deeply commited to maintaining and enriching that vital element of congregational life.

Community is unquestionably that--a vital element of who we are as a congregation.

I spoke of it constantly in my discourses and in my work with church committees and groups.

It was an essential aspect of our mission and, I wouldn't be surprised if it were at least in part true here in your church.

But it is not the core of our faith.

It is, in fact, a relatively new mission we are called to serve.

The need for community is universal and eternal for human beings, I believe.

But it has only been in the last half century that we, UU congregations, have recognized the profound need to provide it.

Two hundred years ago, for Mary Moody Emerson, the need was a respite from the limitations, the excesses of community.

But times are terribly different today.

The lack of connection and personal interaction in the wider world makes our responsibility clear and important.

And the church needs to be a caring and nurturing presence in our profoundedly disconnected common culture.

But community is not the be-all and end-all of our faith.

It is not the central, nor certainly unique, core.

Historically we keep trying to capture the essence of our religious way in words.

The Universalists had their Winchester Confession in 1803 which was defined by them, then, as it!

The Humanists created their Manifesto in 1933--their definitive statement on religion and faith.

In 1985 we UUs established the Purposes and Principles--our best effort at describing where it is at for us.

And UU minister David Baumbaugh makes a strong case for our 7th principle saying it all.

He writes:

"Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part represents our peculiar contribution to the religious agenda.

"Nor is it an insignificant contribution.
Hidden in this apparently uncomplicated, uncontrovertial, innocuous statement is a radical theological position.
The 7th principle calls us to reverence before the world, not some future world, but this miraculous world of our every-day experience.
It challenges us to understand the world as reflexive and relational rather than hierarchical.
It bespeaks a work in which neither god nor humanity is at the center; in which the center is the void, the ever fecund matrix out of which being emerges...
It calls us to trust the process, the creating, evolving, renewing, redeeming process which brings us into being, which sustains us in being, and which transforms our being.
It offers a vision of a world in which the holy, the sacred is incarnated in every moment, in every aspect of being, a world in which God is always fully present, and in which God is always fully at risk.
It offers us opportunity to complete the theological renewal Universalists were attempting in the years immediately before merger [of Univs and Units 40 yrs ago].
We are not called to be the 'quintessential boomer church.'
We are called to follow the directive of our history."

I quote that a length because it is a powerful and important statement of a promising theology for the future.

But, heaven knows, the core of UUism is not a theology.

The theology of Servetus, of Emerson, of the humanists are woven around our core--as should be the theology of the interdependent web, perhaps the best attempt so far to define the undefinable.

But the principles, one or all, are not the core of UUism.

For, behind the principles--are more principles.

Frances Manly, UU minister in Buffalo, has made a list of principles behind our UU principles.

Her list goes like this:

• Underlying the whole set is a tacit assumption that our principles provide a working hypothesis for promoting the evolution of humanity, for ensuring our survival;

• Underlying them is a philosophical assumption we share with science: that there is a vast entity...outside us and within us, which has an intelligible nature;

• Underlying the whole is a faith in the powers and potential of humanity and the awareness that we need each other to find the way; and

• As the principles indicate, a central component in our religion is the search for truth and our individual commitment to do so.

-- A central component in our religion is the search for truth and our individual commitment to keep at that search.

Howe defines it as "intellectual ferment."

The central and unique heart of our faith from the earliest moments has been the willingness to question given truth and to search for new truth.

We are seekers not believers as my colleague Lex Crane observes.

Your affirmation of faith calls the quest of truth our sacrament!

My ministry and my personal odyssey affirm that definition of the fundamental and unique core of UUism: the willingness and courage to apply reason to the questions of existence.

And it was a bit of a surprise to have this "core" validated by none other than Pope John-Paul II not long before he died.

As you recall, after 400 years the Pope decided that Galileo was right and forgave him his apostasy.

In addition, the late Pontiff affirmed that there could ultimately be no conflict between reason and faith.
All truth is ultimately One.

We won't, he felt, understand all that that means until the end of time, but along the way both believers and unbelievers who honestly seek for the truth according to the rules of science and reason will be vindicated. (quote from Newhaus)

That's pretty close to what we've been saying all along.

The tragedy, of course, is that there are so many in our country and the world who are no where near as "advanced" in this regard as, finally, Pope John-Paul II was.

Huston Smith, author of one of the best books on world religions, defined the only good as that which enlarges our awareness.

That's what we've been saying, all along.

It is the core of our unique faith.

No other religion acknowledges and places at the core of its faith this fundamental reality: we are searchers after truth and meaning--in all things, including the most serious issues of life.

At the heart of our history and our existence today is the willingness to allow and encourage wrestling with the big questions.

Why are we here?
What is our significance?
What if anything of us survives our deaths?
What or who is God?
How are we supposed to behave?
How do we relate to our past?
What is sacred?
What, how, who do we worship?
Who are our saviors, exemplars, models?
(Charlie's list, mostly)

Our wrestling is not hard science.

And it certainly is not a cold, rational faith.

Intellectual ferment is the "mind that is free" as Channing puts it so carefully and powerfully.

A mind:

"Free to discover everywhere the radiant signatures of the infinite spirit, and in them finds help to its own spiritual enlargement."

"Which passes life, not in asking what it shall eat or drink, but in hungering, thirsting, seeking after righteousness."

"...which sets no bounds to its love, which, wherever they are seen, delights in virtue and sympathizes with suffering:"

I think Charles Howe is right to say that the core only materializes in retrospect.

Only by looking back can we see and understand what the core is.
In the present, the core is obfuscated by the wrestling--the issues at hand and the ferment that goes on to sort and sift them.

Continuously we recognize that the truth cannot be captured in words, rather it lies in each of us.

We are learning in new ways the old truth that it emerges in our interaction with each other and the wisdom of all ages.

And so truth blossoms for us in community--where we can tease it out of ourselves and test and grow it in interchange with others.

Our core, as old as human history, has proved itself strong and vibrant for our faith for nearly 500 years.

Which is a statement of pride on the one hand and sadness on the other.

Pride in the sense: thank god some people have been holding out for this "intellectual ferment" at the heart of the core issues of life against strenuous, often brutal critique - at hand every day.

Sadness in the sense: that the reality that the Pope recognized has not been more fully realized and incorporated into the religions of the world.

I'm sure I don't need to remind you of the regularly reported surveys that show how solidly fundamentalist the majority, the sizeable majority of Americans are.

If you have been reading the recent works of Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins, you've gotten a serious, if scathing, update on what religion is like out there.

Sad it is INDEED!

Happily, intellectual ferment works like a given in our faith, it is something we act on without "thinking".

It is an underlying dynamic that is, for our kind, "real religion," and the very core of our faith.

Long may it prosper and grow!

Rev. Bradley Greeley