Come As You Are

"In our experiment with religious community we are saying: begin with acceptance, begin with the openness which is a form of love, begin with the love that lets others be who they are--then personal growth is more likely to follow and truth--living, relevant, personal truth--is likely to follow, too."

--Roy D. Philips

This is significant, because I was the minister of the Nora Free Christian Church, Unitarian Universalist.

I had never signed the membership book at the First Congregational Society, Unitarian, in Castine, Maine, the church into which I was born and where I was dedicated in 1951, or at any other Unitarian Universalist church. Technically, then, I was not a member, even though I had always assumed that I was, even though, after a period of exploration, I knew myself to be one. I wasn’t a Unitarian Universalist "who didn’t know it." But I wasn’t yet a member, either.

In most Unitarian Universalist churches, one can become a member by signing the membership book once he or she has reached "the age of reason": typically assumed to be around the age of 15 or 16 (an assumption with which, no offense to our young people present today, some parents might argue.)

The idea that one must "join" the church, or as our Puritan ancestors would have said, "own the covenant," as an adult, or an assumed adult, has roots in the Protestant Reformation of the 1500’s. Then it was believed, by some of the Reformers, at least, that becoming a Christian must be an informed decision. The Protestant Reformers, some of them, at least, rejected the idea of infant baptism in favor of adult baptism. The Baptists of various persuasions are today the direct descendents of these so-called Anabaptists, but so, strangely enough, are we.

Perhaps this technicality explains why more people claim to be Unitarian Universalists than there are actual members in our churches. Perhaps they do not know that, technically, they are not members of any Unitarian Universalist church unless they have made that conscious, and we trust well-reasoned, decision to sign the membership book. (Perhaps this is a more significant explanation than the fact that, being the individualists and skeptics we often are, Unitarian Universalists are sometimes by our very natures "non-joiners.") One can, of course, be sympathetic to Unitarian Universalism without joining a church. But it is not quite the same.

And, of course, one does not have to be a member to attend and participate in a Unitarian Universalist church. Some of our most loyal, active, and generous attendees are non-members, or, as I like to call them, "friends" of the church. One does not have to be a member to participate in a committee, attend an adult education class or spiritual development opportunity, join a small group, or come to a social event. Need I add that one does not have to be a member to support our fundraising activities?

What you cannot do, as a non-member, is vote at a congregational meeting or serve as an Officer of the Church or a Committee Chairperson. That is to say, by not becoming a member you are prevented from participating in what is perhaps our most precious right and inheritance: the right to have an equal voice in the governance of our church. For "congregational polity," as our form of church governance is known, means simply this: that the power is with the people. It is the congregation who decides: on ministers, on leadership, on how we spend our money, on what our goals and mission are. Every single member has a vote; whether or not he or she chooses to exercise it is another question.

This morning we are once again welcoming those who have decided to grasp that opportunity and, I might add, that responsibility of membership. It is a sacred act, about as close to a sacrament as we Unitarian Universalists ever get. It is an act which has roots deep in the Radical Reformation of the 1500’s, and deep in the earliest religious history and earliest days of European settlement of our country. It is an act which speaks of freedom and of the high ideal of democracy and free religious community and individual conscience.

Uniquely, however, Unitarian Universalism extends this privilege without any strings attached. Other than a vague nod to our Unitarian Universalist purposes and principles, and to the fond hope of your support and participation, there is no universal creed or oath of loyalty to which one must assent in order to become a member. We leave up to the individual the ultimate meaning of the act of membership. If you can live with us, we seem to say, we can live with you. It’s much easier in most Unitarian Universalist churches to become a member than to get rid of one who has become troublesome. It can be much easier to become a Unitarian Universalist than it is to define it for oneself or others. It’s easy to become a Unitarian Universalist: much harder to take the responsibility of being and learning and living as one.

But that’s OK, because we Unitarian Universalists understand the religious life as "a way, and not a stopping place." We understand the religious life as a journey or quest. We understand that people join us at different places along that journey or quest. We understand religious community to be possible without theological or philosophical uniformity. And that is why, as the morning’s reading suggested, we say, "Come as you are." As Roy Philips said, "You don’t need to bother to get your beliefs straight first, before you come. Come as you are. Come with your doubts, your hunches, your convictions, your ambiguities."

Unitarian Universalism is more about seeking truth than about possessing it. We are not even sure that there is such a thing a large-T truth. Or we suspect that if there is, we human beings, by dint of our human limitations, will never grasp it fully. We believe that one receives glimpses of the divine from many sources, not just from one. And we believe that the search for truth is an ongoing discipline, that it is our responsibility, as Roy Philips put it, to "grow spiritually and become more fully [our] own best selves." We believe, or ought to, in giving one another the benefit of the doubt.

As your minister, I am just another member. I have only one vote. Whatever authority I have, I have because you have given it to me. Whatever educational background I bring, whatever skills I have learned, whatever positive personal traits I possess, are at your disposal because you have called them forth, but ultimately the ministry of this church is up to you, to each of us. If there is a higher power in all of this, it resides in the give and take, the push and pull, the highs and lows and ups and downs of religious community itself.

So when we say come as you are, we are, of course, being tremendously optimistic. We know that we are not all at the same point along the path of spiritual development. We know, or ought to, that we are all imperfect beings. In the words of the old gospel hymn, we all cry out for acceptance "just as I am, Lord!" We are being tremendously optimistic to believe that there can be religious community "without the personal and institutional style of authoritarianism, of certainty and of ecclesiastical directiveness" [Philips]. Perhaps we are naive!

But that is the bane and the glory of Unitarian Universalism. That freedom at the heart of our way of being religious unifies us even as it threatens to tear us apart. And that is what makes Unitarian Universalism such a precious and unique way of being in religious community.

Come as you are. "Come and be welcome. Come here as you are; let us be together, let all of us grow in open religious community."

Building the beloved community here on earth must always be our first priority. Whatever our theologies, whatever our politics, whatever our sexual orientation, whatever our passions, our greatest need is for communities where we can be who we truly are, where we are loved and accepted just as we are. At a time when our nation and our world are divided and often torn asunder by conflict, the need is greater than ever for religious communities where we can be safe to search for the truth, to discover ourselves, to raise our children, to offer comfort, and to serve and hopefully to save a troubled and troubling world.

Over the years there have been many attempts made to describe membership in a Unitarian Universalist church. Somewhat perversely, I find it reassuring that we don’t have one single answer for what it means, or for how to be one. To a greater extent than in most other religious denominations, the meaning of membership is up to you. The one thing that we can assure you of is that you can come as you are.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that we are always as welcoming as we should be. It doesn’t mean that we always agree (we don’t). It doesn’t mean that we are any better than anyone else. It certainly doesn’t mean that we have figured it all out, whatever it is. It definitely does not mean that we are perfect people, because we are not, and most of us have a very long way to go before we get there.

What it does mean is that we are all in this together. We are all struggling toward the light. We are all at different places along the path of life, hoping for the grace to make the next, small step, looking to be loved for whom we are, not for whom someone thinks we should be, not even necessarily for whom we think we should be. My greatest hope, my dream for Unitarian Universalism, is that it will be that place where each of us will be able to say, "this is home, where no matter what, they will take me in, though I may not yet be all that I wish to be or can be," that place where I may find forgiveness and where I might be allowed to grow and bloom as I must, that place where, as Garrison Keillor once wrote, "People love us, and are glad to see our faces."

What if we were to be such a place? What if we even approximated it?

So to our new members, I say, "welcome." May your membership in this Unitarian Universalist church be everything that you hope it will be. And when it is not, as will inevitably be the case sometimes, may the vision of the beloved community where people are accepted as they are and where they are continue to hold you. Never have we needed such a vision, or one another, more. Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock