UU Blog-o-Sphere Sizzles-Of Covenants, Blasphemy, and Atheists
Theism (Christian variation) and Humanism-Can they co-exist in Unitarian Universalist congregations? From the Centennial Windows at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Woodstock, Illinois.
My, my. Peacebang, one of the most popular and esteemed contributors to Unitarian Universalist blogging, sure stirred the post with her recent post Who Initiates the Covenant? In an innocent sounding theological reflection, she argues that “The ancient covenant tradition that comes to us from the Hebrew Scriptures through the Christian Scriptures and to the congregational Puritan church that established our polity is one wherein the covenant is ALWAYS initiated by God, never by God’s people.” She rejects out of hand any suggestion that a covenant (for a church or congregation) can be an agreement by its members to walk together in common purpose.
Why is this important? Because evolving UU thought has become more and more concerned with covenantal relationships as the basic building blocks of an Association based on rigid congregational polity. It is the covenants of each member congregation that establish them as units entitled to be respected and accepted in a free Association. And individuals have no formal place in Unitarian Universalism except in so far as they subscribe formally to a member “covenantal community.”
Peacebang is a superb scholar, as well as a gifted minister and prolific writer. She is currently engulfed in writing her doctorial dissertation on the topic of covenants. After spending four years on the subject she has STRONG opinions on the subject. And that’s fine.
But, whoa! In her passion, she has stepped off the deep end. To wit: “We cannot create covenant without reverent hearts. To attempt to do so is, in my opinion, a blasphemy. I just said BLASPHEMY! But dern it, I mean it.”
She tries to soften the blow to the many Unitarian Universalist Humanists who would be repelled by-and would never join in-a covenant initiated by God or any euphemism for God. She does so by blithely telling agnostic or atheist UUs what they should put up with: “I think it’s possible for non-theists to accept that some spiritual force greater than ourselves calls us out of our individual concerns to do the work of growing, healing, serving, learning, celebrating, grieving and repenting.”
At least one UU Humanist is having none of it. MoxieLife is positively plaintive in her response post Is There No Room in the UUA for an Atheist? She responds: “I think it is a huge leap for members of my denomination to expect me to warp my view of both humanism and atheism to accept a "force greater" in our lives. If I were to suggest that they move their idea of God to the realm of fairy tale I think they would be offended.”
MoxieLife sees this as the latest assault on non-theist UUs. A second generation humanist UU who grew up in a congregation where God was, at best, a question mark and more likely an affront to “rational thought,” she finds herself increasingly a stranger in congregations “moving into a new age of spirituality.”
Her teenage offspring, who grew up in UU religious education, feels the same alienation. They have stopped attending services. She fears if PeaceBang and others like her insist on affirming a covenant to which she cannot subscribe, she will be permanently deprived of a congregational home. She asks “why can't there be room for those of us who come from the long tradition of humanists? Why must we change to your needs? I am a second generation UU, my daughter a third and it feels like that might be the end of the line for our family. Is that ok with the UUA? Is that ok with you?”
I have some thoughts for both bloggers. First, Peace Bang.
I know what it’s like to fiercely cleave to a useful definition and challenge any one who tries to stretch it in unusual or uncomfortable ways. I used to fight tooth and nail against those who wanted to use “fundamentalism” as a description of any extreme and intolerant version of a religion. It deluted the usefulness of the original, very specific, definition-a tendency in American Protestantism dating to the early 20th Century embracing absolute Biblical literalism and a personal relationship with God. It did not mean simple orthodoxy or conservatism. That definition invited a liberal religious response with in American culture. But it was a useless endeavor. Fundamentalism has become “extremism coupled with the rejection of any other view with in any sect or philosophic tradition.” It happened because we had no concise word for just such a concept and so extended the Christian term as analogous to other religions. Now even I sometimes write about things like “congregational polity fundamentalism.”
Likewise the esteemed Alice Blair Wesley used to rail against the term “denomination” as applied to the UUA. We are an Association of congregations, she would insist. Denomination implied a much different organizational principle. And she was correct, as far is it goes. But for lack of a better word commonly understood both within and outside our own bailiwick, most of us now use denomination to describe our particular sect among a plentitude of sects.
Language, particularly English, evolves. Words flow down hill to fill hollows and make pools where they will. We have no French Academy to defend us from the encroachments of “le drugstore,” no word police with the power to punish those who scratch a new ditch and divert the stream. You may as well join Lear on the heath to rage against the storm.
People-and congregations-will use covenant however they damn well please.
More troublesome, PeaceBang, is your use of the powerful word “blasphemy.” As a believer, you know that blasphemy is an insult and offense against God Him/Her/It self. It is a sin of arrogance more deadly than any offense against another mortal. The blasphemer is cast out from the community of the holy. He or she becomes “the other,” the enemy, something less than human. That way leads to the stake of Servetus
Abner Kneeland, now considered a minor UU saint, was the last man in America jailed for blasphemy in 1838. Let’s leave blasphemy where it belongs-moldering in a past best le.ft behind
As for MoxieLife:
I understand your pain. The transformation of the familiar is almost always painful.
For a few decades Humanists were the dominant voice in Unitarianism and then in the UUA. Once triumphant, by the 1950’s they were often less than gracious to the lingering minority of Theists. They often ran roughshod over congregations banishing “God talk,” expurgating hymns, spurning prayer. They drove more than a few ministers from their pulpits for being insufficiently zealous in the refutation of “mystic-tristic bullshit.” And they often demanded that the entire Association, including congregations with a nostalgic fondness “magical thinking,” bow to their exquisite sensitivities.
But, as you have noted, things are changing. Even though most UUs still describe themselves as Humanist, the hard edge has been knocked off. They are apt to hedge the term with modifiers. They are more apt to embrace a tolerant, bemused agnosticism than an adamant all-or-nothing atheism. They share with the general culture, a yearning for spirituality and often find ways to embrace something “Greater” without acknowledging theism.
Many folks were astounded a few years ago when Rev. Bill Sinkford successfully argued for greater use of the “Language of Reverence” with only a modest, if furious, rear-guard action by old line Humanists. Indeed many Humanists found new ways to accommodate both the language and the increasing numbers Theists of one stripe or another who were sharing the pews with them. Some found refuge in the awe and wonder for the universe expressed by Carl Sagan and later developed into The Great Story. Other found no theistic forms of Buddhism and Taoism acceptable.
But to the committed rationalist Humanist of the old stripe it is all disgraceful trimming and surrender to popular delusion as a form naked marketing.
The trouble is your loss at a transforming, living religion, is re-playing a repetitive theme. In America the first generation Unitarians-William Ellery Channing et.al.-offended the orthodox within the New England Standing Order. That first generation was hardly yet gray when the Transcendentalists upset their apple cart. And so it would go, one generation’s radical reformers would become the beleaguered guardians of timeless tradition. The Humanists in their time supplanted the genteel respectability of the rational Christianity advocated by the Eliots and the old Brahmin establishment. Yet none of the new transformation, however powerful, ever fully supplanted the earlier ones. They eventually learned to live, however uncomfortably, together. What makes you think that Humanism can defy this evolution and freeze Unitarian Universalism into a kind of rational orthodoxy?
Humanism in our traditions flourished from three sources. First was 19th Century Free Thought which matured through the short lived Free Religious Association in the east and which thrived in many congregations in the Mid west that were part of the Western Unitarian Conference. Many of these congregations maintain a Humanist flavor to this day. Second are those congregations founded as part of the Fellowship Movement, which planted small lay, led congregations in many areas of the country where liberal religion had previously seldom thrived. These congregations became beacon for outcasts in regions, like the South, with a dominant church going culture. They provided cover to heretics and needed re-enforcement for otherwise isolated individual. Finally, in large numbers of secularized Jews infused congregations with the Humanism of Felix Adler.
By the time of the consolidation of with the Universalists in 1960 these three sources had spread over much of the movement. Pockets of Unitarian Christianity, particularly in the old tribal homeland of New England remained. But they--and the supposedly backwards Universalists--were expected to slowly shrivel and eventually disappear in the face of superior, rational Humanism.
But it never really happened that way. The rise of Feminism and the Ecology movement in the denomination each contributed new strands of spirituality divorced from traditionally patriarchal Old-Man-In-The-Sky God that most Humanists had been rebelling against. Stubborn Universalism refused to die and began to take root in even the stoniest of Unitarian hearts. And there was no escaping the general cultural influence of New Age religion, particularly on the West Coast. Like it or not, “Spirituality” has been the incoming tide of UUism for nearly twenty years.
These kinds of sea changes in our movement have often followed the ministers. Young ministers, enrapt of Ralph Waldo Emerson, brought Transcendentalism to all corners of the country. A wave of Humanist ministers, many of them returning war veterans, washed over and transformed Unitarianism in the Post War years. Now every seminarian new minister I meet subscribes to some form of Theism, many embracing some sort of Christian identity. They begin to fill even the most Humanist pulpits and slowly coax their congregations to acceptance of “the new reverence.”
So should an old school Humanist be discouraged? Take heart. This, too, shall pass. Our new congregations and our new ministers are no more immune from the general culture than were earlier generations. The New Atheism has asserted itself in a number of recent best selling books. According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life Americans describing themselves as “unaffiliated,” including self-confessed atheists and agnostics as well as those too reticent to admit it, now fall behind just Catholics and Southern Baptists in total numbers. From a growth standpoint, it may be better to market Unitarian Universalism to theses discontents than to Theists who can find many havens.
My guess is another generation may find Spiritual UUs gnashing their teeth over the triumph of some kind or evolved and re-branded Humanism.
In the mean time, how can we live together? Well, that brings us back to those covenants. The ones where we agree to walk together for mutual support in our individual quests for truth, meaning, and justice in our lives. They just can’t be handed on down from on high by somebody’s idea of God.