The Paradox of Universalism
Another long boring blog that will make Robin complain...
I'm a Unitarian-Universalist. Strictly speaking, this means that I'm a member of a church that is part of the Unitarian Universalist Association, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Since I live outside of the United States, my congregation is the Church of the Larger Fellowship, a "distributed" church which Robin likes to call my "internet cult".
Unitarian-Universalists are sort of infamous for being anti-creedal and non-dogmatic; in other words, we're not a Christian organization, and we don't require our members to hold to a particular set of beliefs. This causes a bit of confusion and consternation in the outside world. UUs get questions all the time like "are you a religion" and "well why do you even bother to be an organization?" Just because we're non-dogmatic doesn't mean that we don't hold to a set of common principles (though even these can be a bit controversial for those of us whose definition of "liberal religion" leans toward the "libertarian religion"). However, I think the very definition of "universalism" contains a paradox which I think is of consequence to people the world over, not just UUs.
The "Universalist" in "Unitarian-Universalist" comes from a church called the Universalist Church of America which became part of the UUA in the 1960's. The defining belief of the Universalists was that of "universal salvation", which said that all persons, having been created by God, must consequently be destined for heaven. (The "Unitarian", by the way, comes from another church, whose defining belief was that solution to the paradox of Jesus's mortality and divinity was that Jesus was not divine, but a mortal man. The Unitarians still exist in many parts of the world, have a creed, and consider themselves Christian, although other Christian churches often do not accept them as such.)
But concept of universal salvation is dependent on, and tied to, a much older form of universalism, which is a feature of virtually all Christian churches, as well as many other of the major religions of the present day, but by no means historically.
The earliest gods (that we know about) were local gods. They lived in a specific geographical area and were worshiped by the people of that area. If you left your hometown and traveled even a day or two by foot, you would be among people who worshiped another god. Your god might encourage you to conquer foreign lands and people, and might not want you to worship other gods, but that didn't mean that other gods did not exist, or that you had to force other people to give up their gods and take yours. Judaism comes out of this time period, and to this day most forms of Judaism do not do missionary work.
One of the first known serious breaks with this tradition was the Romans, who allowed their conquered people to keep their own gods, but enthusiastically associated foreign gods with their own: your grain goddess is the same as our grain goddess; your storm god is the same as our storm god; and so on. In other words, there is a "universal" storm god, and everyone's storm gods are images of that one. The group of Jews which became the first Christians lived within the Roman world and were familiar with this mentality. They, however, took it a step or two further. We are Christians, they reasoned, a band of people with a god. However, we are not Christians due to ancestry or geography, but by choice. Therefore all the "other" people out there are not simply irrelevant, but in fact "potential Christians", and need to be given the opportunity to worship our god.
This was a pretty new idea at that time - the idea that all the peoples of the world could, in theory, be measured by the same stick, and therefore - potentially - be held to the same moral standards. But in the last two millenia this idea has become pretty popular. Without this basic kernel of an idea the American Declaration of Independence could not declare that "all men are created equal" (a big-U Universalist claim if I ever heard one). The idea that all human beings on this earth might share equal rights - and, possibly, responsibilities - is nowadays espoused by people of a variety of religions, and people who consider themselves non-religous, also.
However, what things fit inside this "universal rights and responsiblities" box is a matter of great debate. It's one thing to claim that all human beings have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but do all human beings have a responsibility to protect the earth? love their neighbors? not murder? be vegetarian? abstain from sex outside of marriage?
There are relatively few people in the world today who don't hold some kind of universalist views. But absolute universalism is an impossible contradiction. There is no such thing as as a perfect "right to liberty", since it means that we must give one person the liberty to constrain the liberty of others. Absolute Universalism reaches its limits, also, when our acknowledgement of the "inherent worth and dignity of every person" prevents us from condemning them for trampling on others' worth and dignity.
For there are no universal "rights" without universal "responsibilities". We cannot insist on universal "liberty" without, in some way, taking it away. Belief in universal rights is moral imperialism. If that's the case, we might as well admit it, and be forthright about what morals we think are universal, and worth proselytizing about.
We may not all agree on what these morals are, but the discussion is worth having. And what is the right place to have this discussion? Church, of course. This is why (one of the reasons) I'm a UU.
Blogged with Flock
I'm a Unitarian-Universalist. Strictly speaking, this means that I'm a member of a church that is part of the Unitarian Universalist Association, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Since I live outside of the United States, my congregation is the Church of the Larger Fellowship, a "distributed" church which Robin likes to call my "internet cult".
Unitarian-Universalists are sort of infamous for being anti-creedal and non-dogmatic; in other words, we're not a Christian organization, and we don't require our members to hold to a particular set of beliefs. This causes a bit of confusion and consternation in the outside world. UUs get questions all the time like "are you a religion" and "well why do you even bother to be an organization?" Just because we're non-dogmatic doesn't mean that we don't hold to a set of common principles (though even these can be a bit controversial for those of us whose definition of "liberal religion" leans toward the "libertarian religion"). However, I think the very definition of "universalism" contains a paradox which I think is of consequence to people the world over, not just UUs.
The "Universalist" in "Unitarian-Universalist" comes from a church called the Universalist Church of America which became part of the UUA in the 1960's. The defining belief of the Universalists was that of "universal salvation", which said that all persons, having been created by God, must consequently be destined for heaven. (The "Unitarian", by the way, comes from another church, whose defining belief was that solution to the paradox of Jesus's mortality and divinity was that Jesus was not divine, but a mortal man. The Unitarians still exist in many parts of the world, have a creed, and consider themselves Christian, although other Christian churches often do not accept them as such.)
But concept of universal salvation is dependent on, and tied to, a much older form of universalism, which is a feature of virtually all Christian churches, as well as many other of the major religions of the present day, but by no means historically.
The earliest gods (that we know about) were local gods. They lived in a specific geographical area and were worshiped by the people of that area. If you left your hometown and traveled even a day or two by foot, you would be among people who worshiped another god. Your god might encourage you to conquer foreign lands and people, and might not want you to worship other gods, but that didn't mean that other gods did not exist, or that you had to force other people to give up their gods and take yours. Judaism comes out of this time period, and to this day most forms of Judaism do not do missionary work.
One of the first known serious breaks with this tradition was the Romans, who allowed their conquered people to keep their own gods, but enthusiastically associated foreign gods with their own: your grain goddess is the same as our grain goddess; your storm god is the same as our storm god; and so on. In other words, there is a "universal" storm god, and everyone's storm gods are images of that one. The group of Jews which became the first Christians lived within the Roman world and were familiar with this mentality. They, however, took it a step or two further. We are Christians, they reasoned, a band of people with a god. However, we are not Christians due to ancestry or geography, but by choice. Therefore all the "other" people out there are not simply irrelevant, but in fact "potential Christians", and need to be given the opportunity to worship our god.
This was a pretty new idea at that time - the idea that all the peoples of the world could, in theory, be measured by the same stick, and therefore - potentially - be held to the same moral standards. But in the last two millenia this idea has become pretty popular. Without this basic kernel of an idea the American Declaration of Independence could not declare that "all men are created equal" (a big-U Universalist claim if I ever heard one). The idea that all human beings on this earth might share equal rights - and, possibly, responsibilities - is nowadays espoused by people of a variety of religions, and people who consider themselves non-religous, also.
However, what things fit inside this "universal rights and responsiblities" box is a matter of great debate. It's one thing to claim that all human beings have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but do all human beings have a responsibility to protect the earth? love their neighbors? not murder? be vegetarian? abstain from sex outside of marriage?
There are relatively few people in the world today who don't hold some kind of universalist views. But absolute universalism is an impossible contradiction. There is no such thing as as a perfect "right to liberty", since it means that we must give one person the liberty to constrain the liberty of others. Absolute Universalism reaches its limits, also, when our acknowledgement of the "inherent worth and dignity of every person" prevents us from condemning them for trampling on others' worth and dignity.
For there are no universal "rights" without universal "responsibilities". We cannot insist on universal "liberty" without, in some way, taking it away. Belief in universal rights is moral imperialism. If that's the case, we might as well admit it, and be forthright about what morals we think are universal, and worth proselytizing about.
We may not all agree on what these morals are, but the discussion is worth having. And what is the right place to have this discussion? Church, of course. This is why (one of the reasons) I'm a UU.
Blogged with Flock