The Meaning of Membership

June 9, 2002

"Church is the communal celebration of our elemental joys and sorrows, of our gains and losses, of great meanings." --Dr. Bernard Loomer

The recognition of new members always provides an opportunity for me to think anew about what it means to belong to a community of faith as opposed, say, to a social club or a civic organization. Why belong to a church or synagogue or mosque? Outside of the American south or Midwest, there doesn't seem to be a lot of pressure here in the United States to join a church or even to be active in a religious organization. That is, here in our country church membership is a totally voluntary activity. There is no state religion (thank God) and mostly (unlike for our Transylvanian Unitarian friends) there is no ethnic connection, or at least no binding ethnic connection.

The Transylvanian case is interesting. Transylvanian Unitarians are either born or made by marriage within the ethnic Hungarian minority population. They find it very difficult to grasp that here one can "choose" his or her faith, that one from a different religion can choose--or would choose--to be Unitarian Universalist.

Commonly in Transylvania, the women follow the religion of their husbands, although I have discovered that this is not always the case. Therefore, if a Hungarian Roman Catholic woman marries a Hungarian Unitarian man, in the usual course of things the woman will become a Unitarian. I have no direct evidence for this particular conjunction, but it is what I am told, and I know for a fact that our partner church minister's wife Borika was raised in the Hungarian Reformed Church. What is really essential in Romania is one's ethnic status: Romanian/Hungarian intermarriage remains a rarity. That is, one's ethnicity, in this case Hungarianness, is more important than one's religion to the maintenance of the social fabric.

Today there is a movement by younger Unitarian ministers in Transylvania to allow ministerial spouses to maintain their own religious affiliations and not to be required to convert to Unitarianism as is now the case. The older generation is opposed to this change, but I suspect it is only a matter of time before it becomes an accepted practice.

Transylvanian Unitarians frequently speak of themselves as "a minority within a minority." Their religious movement is the smallest of the three traditionally Hungarian religious denominations: Unitarian, Roman Catholic, and Reformed. Actually, it is this double minority status which has probably enabled Unitarianism to survive during its rocky, 450 year history in Transylvania. There is definitely a solidarity--almost a siege mentality--which has developed within Unitarianism which has enabled it not only to survive but even at times to thrive. Most recently, of course, the Unitarian Church in Transylvania has survived 50 years of "atheistic" communist government. It is a testament not only to the strength of their convictions, but to the effectiveness of their ethnic minority status and their Hungarian language in forging a strong group mentality and a deep loyalty to their cause.

The other major difference between our Transylvanian Unitarian relatives and ourselves is that the Transylvanian Unitarian church has a catechism by which all Unitarian youth--and many children of the gypsy population--are confirmed into the Unitarian faith at around the age of 13 or 14. Not all children go through the confirmation process, but most do, and it is made easier by the fact that in Romania, religious education takes place in the "public" schools. Each minister or priest or spouse of the minister in the village spends one day a week in the school teaching religious education. All children of Unitarian families attend classes with the Unitarian minister.

I must say that I found myself envious of the strong connection with the children of his church which this practice creates for our partner church minister, Zsolt Jakab. And since all the children in the school are required to attend religious education classes in their faith of origin (with the exception of the gypsies, who can choose which religious education classes to attend, since gypsies have no organized religion), there is no stigma attached to religious education in general.

Of course, this could never happen in our country, and I'm sure that this is a good thing in the larger scheme of things. But since we Unitarian Universalists no longer have a catechism (though several existed during the 19th century among both Unitarians and Universalists), we have a more difficult time "indoctrinating" our children into our faith. Indeed, we are conflicted about the whole idea of indoctrination for our children, anyway.

Though some of our churches have very well developed "coming of age" programs for young people, the voluntary nature of these programs sometimes undermines their purpose of creating future Unitarian Universalists. And among us, membership is an adult decision anyway, made at the earliest around the age of 15 or 16 (depending on a church's bylaws) when a young person can make the decision to join the church and become a legal voting member. Without a specified body of beliefs, it becomes incumbent on the youthful member to forge his or her own faith: something we Unitiarian Universalists hold dear, but which I think is very difficult for a very young person who has not had much time to think about it, or much life experience to bring to the process of faith development.

I raise these issues by way of inviting us to think about the role and meaning of membership in our church, and some of the challenges that face us as a non-creedal faith trying to pass that faith on to the next generation. I think our task is a very difficult one, and I think history has shown that we lose many of our young people after high school and college because a strong enough bond has not been forged to keep them within the Unitarian Universalist fold.

And because of their non-doctrinal and non-dogmatic religious education in our Sunday Schools, it is often easier for Unitarian Universalist young people, when they grow up, to accept the usually more conservative religion of their partners or spouses than for the opposite to happen.

Today, we are once again recognizing those who have made a conscious--and one trusts reasonably well-informed decision--to become members of our church. How is this different than, say, joining the country club or the Rotary Club? Obviously, all three of these groups have a social component. And one can even include one's entire family in a country club membership.

But I think there are a few things which make church membership unique. First of all, we are a "cradle to grave" organization. I guess you can have your funeral at the country club if you want, and if they allow it, but that is not it's usual purpose, and I think in general that would be considered a "non-conforming usage" for the country club. No, the church is somewhat unique in being a place where we can belong during our entire span of life. And while the Rotary Club does some very good things, there is not a millennia-long tradition of seeking after social justice in the Rotary.

Neither the country club nor the Rotary is a place that we think of first for exploring what we might think of as the "ultimate" questions of existence: why was I born? what am I supposed to do with my life? why must I die? what does it mean to be good and to live a good life? Though these questions may sometimes occur to us on the golf course or in the midst of a business meeting or purely social gathering, those are not places where such questions are raised for our consideration on a regular basis, or where there is an expectation that such questions may find some answers, even if they are only temporary ones.

The church is the only place I know of which combines the social with the ultimate. That is, the church has both a horizontal, interpersonal dimension, and a vertical one. It is both an immediate and an ultimate institution. Here we are invited not only into relationship with other people on the journey of life, but, particularly through the worship service, into relationship with ultimate reality: what some of us call God, what theologian Paul Tillich called "the Ground of Our Being," and what still others call the "life force" or simply "the creation." The church provides some unique opportunities for personal growth and for comfort during times of crisis and loss. It has a serious social justice role, defined over thousands of years, which calls us to service which is above and beyond our own self--or selfish--interest.

Uniquely, of course, membership in a Unitarian Universalist Church can be an affirmation of our convictions about a free and responsible search for meaning, about justice and the oneness of all creation, about freedom of consciousness, tolerance and acceptance for other ways of being religious, and about the use of reason in the pursuit of religious questions.

Membership in a Unitarian Universalist church is joining a particular religious tradition within the larger Judeo-Christian religious tradition from which we have sprung, a tradition which on both sides of our dual heritage emphasized the goodness rather than the evil in human nature, and the universal love of God; a tradition made sacred by the keeping of good women of men for almost two hundred years here in North America. It is a tradition which calls us to take responsibility for our own religious beliefs and convictions, and not to unquestioningly accept what has been handed to us by someone else--even by the minister.

Ours is a challenging faith, then, characterized by a diversity of understandings and beliefs, but grounded in the idea that for religion to meaningful it must be, first and foremost, personal. Truth must be tested by each individual and not accepted on faith alone. No one here will tell you what you must believe.

And all of us have a responsibility to build a world of peace and justice for those who shall come after us.

The recognition of new members is an opportunity for me and for all of us to reconsider what our membership in this church and in this free faith means, or could mean: not only for ourselves, but for a world desperate for a reasonable alternative to religious fanaticism. It reminds me why, although I grew up in the Unitarian Universalist movement, I made a conscious decision as an adult to become a Unitarian Universalist, and why I chose and daily choose to make it my life's vocation, and continue to think that Unitarian Universalism is worthy of my commitment--my time, my energy, and my treasure.

So let us today welcome these new members among us and be glad in their presence and their gifts. I hope that if they aren't already, they will become active in this church and in our larger free religious movement. I hope that Unitarian Universalism and this church will continue to feed their spirits and inspire them for their journeys of life. I trust that here they will find companions and friends for those journeys, and I hope that their relationship with the great mystery of being will be strengthened and deepened by all that they encounter here. May we offer them our love and support, and may they help us to a deeper understanding of ourselves and of what it means to be human. To me, this is the real meaning of membership: that it will help us to live better lives, and to be those better people that we dream of being. May it come to pass, and be so for each and every one of us. Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock