UU Church of Berks
An Honest Religion
Rev. Sandra Fees
February 12, 2012
One of my colleagues refers to Unitarian Universalism as an honest religion. This phrase resonates with me. It captures an essential aspect of my sense of religion. And yet the idea of an honest religion is a bit curious. It seems it ought to go without saying that religion – any religion – is honest, or at least strives to be. Honesty and integrity are core values of every religious tradition.
And yet religion falters – and in some dramatic and public ways. Sadly, there are lots of examples, too many of them. We’re all familiar with the religious deceptions in this country. Not only did priests sexually abuse congregants, including children, but leaders tried to conceal the sexual misconduct by priests. There are the televangelist scandals in which charismatic evangelical leaders conned people out of money to support their own lavish lifestyles rather than using the money to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.
Sometimes it seems the United States, and Christianity in particular, are the most notorious in this regard. But there are examples in other religions and in other countries. In recent years, Thailand has experienced numerous temple scandals. One monk was accused of using $5.4 million in donations to purchase land and jewelry for himself. Another monk laundered money from a bank heist so he could buy and sell Buddha images. (“Scandal in the Temple,” May 2010, Yasmin Lee Arpon)
Dishonesty like this combined with violence and other shocking actions done in the name of religion have generated a slew of contemporary books criticizing religion. Authors like Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, who died recently, and others have argued that religion causes more harm than good. They characterize religion as dangerous. Sam Harris says it’s ruinous and even stupid. And it isn’t too hard to see why. In a few weeks, I’m going to talk about that in more depth, in a sermon about God, Religion, and Other Dangerous Ideas. The reality is that there is corruption, scandal, and dishonesty in religion just as there is in politics, the workplace and elsewhere. Religion is not immune to human failure, greed, and materialism.
Religion is guilty of another kind of dishonesty, one that strikes me as incredibly arrogant. It’s the claim to have the Truth – Truth with a capital “T.” And also Truth in the singular form. Religious institutions, religious leaders, and religious adherents sometimes claim they know the way, the only way, the one way. John Shelby Spong, who was bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark for 24 years before retirement in 2001, has written numerous books challenging exclusive religious claims. While Bishop, he wrote the essay, “Religious Dishonesty, Religious Hostility.” In it, he said:
One of the false assumptions of some religious people is that they are in possession of the fullness of God's truth. … This in turn justifies in their minds hostile, dishonest and sometimes killing behavior patterns that are perpetrated on those who do not accept their limited definitions of God’s truth. This is the same mentality that burns heretics at the stake, that excommunicates people with new ideas from the life of the church, that persecutes Jews and other religious minorities, that starts religious wars, and that in extreme cases, justifies murder at abortion clinics. … If religious people, holding as we do nothing but partial truth, act as if our partial truth is ultimate truth, and proceed to make imperialistic and exclusive claims for our version of truth, then we become idolatrous. … God and God's truth can only be served as we approach the awesome wonder and mystery of God with genuine humility. If the religious voices of our day could do that, the world would surely be a safer and more loving place in which to live. (www.dioceseofnewark.org/vox20395.html)
An honest religion acknowledges the partial nature of its own body of knowledge and the partial nature of any person’s human understanding. Rather than insisting it has all the answers and coercing people into rigid, exclusive claims, an honest religion encourages people to keep an open mind to new knowledge and to think for themselves. This idea of partial truths is relatively easy for us to grasp.
At least compared to the matter of competing truths. How is it possible for a group of people, like our congregation, to agree that there can be no God, one God or multiple Gods? I mean, there can’t really be no God and multiple Gods, right? These seem like obviously contradictory positions. How can we affirm the truth of all of them? Someone has got to be wrong? Someone has got to be right? Right?
In Open Source Church: Making Room for the Wisdom of All, Landon Whitsitt explores what it means to live with this tension. He makes an analogy between Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia and church community. He imagines what the church might look like if it used Wikipedia’s methodology. He says it would be more participatory and inclusive. When I read this book, I kept thinking, “yep, it would look a lot like Unitarian Universalism.” Whitsitt is a Presbyterian minister. It helps to remember we don’t hold an exclusive claim to being inclusive!
Wikipedia’s goal is to make “the sum of all human knowledge” available. Anyone can contribute to “the sum of all human knowledge” as long as what they have to offer is “established and credible.” Obviously some information is more verifiable – more clearly true or false - than other information. Gravity, for example. Other knowledge can be less reliably true or false. Here’s a simple example from Whitsitt’s book: the spelling of “Kiev.” The common English spelling is K-i-e-v. In 1995, the Ukrainian government adopted the spelling K-y-i-v. The difference may seem trivial. Not so for Ukrainians. It’s tied to their sense of national identity and ethnic history. Which spelling is correct? Wikipedia includes both, because both are verifiable.
Applying that methodology to church, we can’t prove or disprove the existence of God. That’s why we can agree to worship with others who don’t share our individual truths about the existence of God. What we do together is help ensure we have a valid basis for our claims and then explore together how to live with the tensions among us. This is the open source worldview. According to Whitsitt, “the open source worldview … holds that we each inhabit different contextual realities. Your reality and mine will most certainly be different, but because we both have a valid basis on which to make our claims, we will need to learn how to live with the tension.”
Invariably someone says this means anyone can believe anything they want to believe. But keep in mind that phrase “established and credible.” Our Unitarian Universalist search for the truth is grounded in what is “established and credible” in liberal religion, in Unitarian Universalism. So what does that mean? Our UU principles are a great source of what’s considered established and credible, of what we collectively hold in common. We affirm the worth and dignity of every person. We seek justice, equity, and compassion in human relationship. We see ourselves are part of the interdependent web of existence. We encourage each other to grow spiritually. We are seekers of truth and meaning.
Being an honest religion also means speaking openly of difficult, uncomfortable truths – and even unpopular ones, like sex education, for example. A few years ago, Unitarian Universalist minister Debra Haffner appeared on an O’Reilly Factor segment called “Kiddie Sex Ed?” She and Bill O’Reilly debated sex ed for elementary school children. They clearly had different truths about sex education. O’Reilly asked her what a kindergarten teacher should say if a child asked where babies come from. Haffner responded: “In a special place inside a woman there is a uterus. And inside the uterus a baby begins to grow.” O’Reilly interrupted saying, “No! Five year olds, I don’t want ‘uterus’. . . It’s beyond their capacity to understand.” Haffner explained that children need to know the correct names of their body parts while O’Reilly shook his head no.
Haffner sees her work in this area as religious. She says, “Sexuality education is a religious issue. We have a commitment to helping young people develop a moral conscience, including an ability to make healthy decisions. We have a religious commitment to truth telling, which means that people should have full and accurate information, not biased and censored.” (“UU sexologist faces off against Bill O'Reilly, Michelle Bates Deakin, UU World)
Let’s face it, there aren’t too many churches where your minister is going to say the word uterus from the pulpit. But some of you may find that preferable to another subject I’d like to speak honestly about: the pledge drive. Talking about money is part of being an honest religion. All the same it can make people squirm in their seats even more than Bill O’Reilly squirmed in his interview with Debra Haffner. I’m grateful that in this congregation we are being more direct about money and working through our discomfort. We have even made generosity part of our mission – generosity of time, talent, and resources.
Our congregation runs a balanced budget and continues to grow in generosity every year, despite some hard economic times. The reason is that you’ve been called to make the church one of your primary financial commitments and many of you have stepped up to meet that call. There’s no way we would have a new sound system if we weren’t generous. There’s no way we would be running a Food Pantry or participating in Family Promise without a commitment to being generous. We wouldn’t have a music program or religious education or a clean building.
We do this through the pledge drive. This is the time each year when we ask members and friends to make a financial commitment for the next fiscal year, which begins on July 1. You’ve heard Laura Carson talk about why her family contributes. We ask each of you to search your hearts and minds and budgets, and to assess your family’s situation honestly. We ask those who can to stretch themselves and to be especially generous using fair share guidelines – as a guideline. Strive toward the 3 percent or even 5 percent levels. Those who are on a fixed income, who have recently lost a job, who are underemployed, or are having some financial challenges - you belong here too. We encourage you to move toward economic stability for yourself and your family first. Then give as generously as you can to the church. Fair share giving is intended to be fair not equal.
For the next pledge year, I will be making a commitment at the 4 percent level or $200 a month. This is not a hardship or some unpleasant obligation. Generosity is part of my spiritual practice. There is nothing – no other cause - that more closely matches my values than Unitarian Universalism.
What Unitarian Universalists can do together when we pool our resources is different from what any of us can do alone. Together we can have a voice and a presence we can’t possibly have on our own. And it’s a voice that needs to be heard. Ours is a unique perspective in the religious landscape.
We recognize that we hold only partial truth – individually and as a religion. We value a participatory approach to religion in which we each help to build the sum of knowledge in our spiritual community. We encourage a diversity of truths to exist side by side in tension with each other. And in this context, we stretch ourselves, aspiring to remain open and to live into the mystery, ever seeking, ever growing, ever learning. May we embrace this mystery and the never-ending search for truth.
Amen. Blessed be.