Why do we gather in religious community? What is religious community? How do we tie our diverse religious beliefs and yearnings together into one community?

The Rev. James Covington, serving the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Briarton, Croton and Ossining, New York, takes a stab at answering some of these concerns in a sermon delivered last January.

For consideration: What binds you to your religious community? What values do you have in common with those who hold different beliefs than you?

What it Means to Be Religious

by Rev. James Covington

What does it mean to be religious? My, what a question! I wonder what your answer would be. I am certain we would have as many different answers as there are people sitting in front of me. It is a question always on my mind—not urgently so, but at least, somewhere peripheral. It has been on my mind more so recently. I wonder why. Well, we live in a time when the world about us is so rife with political and religious conflict, one cannot help but despair of it all. Sam Harris’s book, The End of Faith, certainly has been an evocative reading. And as an association, Unitarian Universalists are presently, it seems, attempting to address the question amongst ourselves—if we are a “liberal” religious movement, then what do we mean by that? What do we mean by “religious?”

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On Monday, we looked at a Statement of Conscience from the 2001 Unitarian Universalist General Assembly about “responsible consumption” as an introduction to the holiday shopping season.

Today’s selection, a sermon from my good friend the Rev. Chip Roush (PDF), serving the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Grand Traverse in Traverse City, Michigan, examines consumerism in direct relationship to the holidays, and brings to to think about what these winter holidays, and our lives, are really for. This service was celebrated November 26, 2006.

For consideration: What is a meaningful gift, to you? How do you cope with the chaos that can be December?

Big Is More

by the Rev. Chip Roush

How many of you have ever made, with your own hands, a gift for someone you love? How many of you have made a gift within the last year? How many make more gifts than you purchase?

The year I finished college, I was in dire financial straits. I graduated with a degree in philosophy, which explains part of the problem. I did not have a job, so I moved home while I looked for work. As gifts that year, instead of buying things, I wrote out some of my favorite memories with the person to whom the gift was intended. For example, I wrote to my grandmother about the taste of her hot chocolate, still the best I’ve ever tasted, and about the night I spent at her house, laughing with her about something on the television. As I remember, the program itself wasn’t particularly amusing, but we were in the right mood to be silly, and gales of laughter swept through us.

Writing up that memory, as a gift to her years later, we were able to relive that moment, and strengthen our familial bond together— and it didn’t cost a penny.

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Welcome to the holiday shopping season!

Unitarian Universalists do celebrate Christmas, generally, and in this culture that usually involves giving gifts. However, it is interesting and worthwhile to examine how we can meld our faith lives and our “outside of church” lives when it comes to issues of consumption.

In 2001, the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly adopted a Statement of Conscience entitled “Responsible Consumption Is Our Moral Imperative.” The process for generating these statements has changed recently (PDF), but at the time this one was written, a study-action issue on some kind of social witness was selected each year by congregational delegates at the General Assembly, sending it out to the individual congregations for study and discussion over a two-year period under the guidance of the Commision on Social Witness. Each year at General Assembly, a drafted statement resulting from those two years of study would be presented to the delegates to be revised and approved. So, this study-action issue was chosen at the 1999 General Assembly in Salt Lake City, and the statement was drafted and approved in 2001.

The ideas presented in the statement are not unfamiliar in Unitarian Universalist circles, but are very thought-provoking in the context of the holiday shopping rush.

For consideration: What, if anything, has changed in this consumer-based culture since this statement was adopted? With what do you agree or disagree in this statement? How do these ideas inform individual choices in how we spend our money and other resources, particularly around the holidays? What is the nature of gift-giving in a religious context?

From “Responsible Consumption Is Our Moral Imperative”

the 2001 General Assembly Statement of Conscience

Our Unitarian Universalist faith calls upon us to approach the ethic of responsible consumption with a passion for seeking truth, a thirst for making justice, a vision of interdependence, and a willingness to re-examine our individual actions and beliefs. Becoming responsible consumers means putting into action our religious Principles of the inherent worth and dignity of all people and the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.

We each begin a personal journey toward responsible consumption from a different place. Wherever we start, we must be mindful of our behavior, attentive to the voices and needs of others, and conscious of the natural rhythms of the world. Our journey continues through education. Through secular and religious education programs, we must challenge ourselves to rethink the underlying assumptions that guide our choices. Through dialogue in small groups, we nurture each other’s environmental consciousness and examine competing claims of what individual responsibility actually means. Our journey is fulfilled through activism. We will work together for legislative changes that will reduce over-consumption, environmental degradation, and the unjust distribution of resources.

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In anticipation of Thanksgiving, here is a lovely sermon by the Rev. Nathan Woodliff-Stanley, who serves Jefferson Unitarian Church in Golden, Colorado as the Minister of Social Responsibility, about saying “grace,” on special occasions and as an every day practice.

For consideration: Do you say grace before meals? Is this a meaningful practice for you?

Saying Grace

Nathan Woodliff-Stanley

Have you ever had the experience of sitting down to a meal with relatives or friends or some other group of people, and without advance warning, being asked to say grace? It may be something you do routinely–not a big deal–or the very thought might strike terror in your heart. I can assure you that it happens more often to ministers, especially at times like Thanksgiving, and it pays to be prepared. But I’ve still had my share of stumbles, and it can be disconcerting for anyone to be put on the spot unexpectedly. There is real value in spontaneous prayer, but being asked to say grace without warning can be especially awkward if you are someone who doesn’t normally say grace before meals, if you don’t know what the group expects, or if all you can think of are childhood formulas for saying grace that no longer fit your beliefs. I can imagine someone who is agnostic trying to pray as honestly as possible:

“Dear God, if there is a God, we thank you for this food, to whatever extent you were responsible for it. We ask for your blessings upon us, if that isn’t too presumptuous and if you really do specially bless people, and all this we pray in your holy name, whatever that might be.”

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Approaching prayer as a language of faith in a religion that does not require belief in a god can be a tricky thing. Today’s prayer (PDF) by the Rev. Bill Neely, from his days as the ministerial intern at Unity Church-Unitarian in St. Paul, Minnesota, explores this unknowing.

Rev. Neely now serves Neshoba Unitarian Universalist Church in Cordova, Tennessee.

For consideration: What do you name Holy? What do you consider larger than yourself?

Minister’s Prayer

by Rev. Bill Neely

Let us pray,

What shall we name you today, how shall we call you forth, by what shall we know you?

Are you Love greater than feeling, are you Truth truer than reason? Shall we call you Hope fueling all life, or Source of all beginnings and endings? Are you the gentle Father? Are you the sustaining Mother? Today, will you be our Trusting Companion or our Loving Guide? Shall we name you All? Shall we call you One? Are you all of these? Are you Mystery?

In humility, may our hearts call you whatever they will call you, knowing that all are just fine for now, knowing that while our language may be limited, love is not. With openness and with courage, may we seek to know you, even though we can’t define you, may we experience you, even though your truest nature is a mystery to us.

May you be the seed of unknown origin growing in our hearts and minds, a seed whose creation we do not understand and whose destiny we cannot foretell, but whose growth nonetheless nourishes our minds and refreshes our hearts, regardless of whether we can express it or not. For it is in our moments of greatest joy and greatest sorrow, our times of great fear and great hope, or even when we are accompanying someone close to us as they move through those moments, that we often find ourselves wordless or our language lacking. And yet the experience may be, even with diminished verbosity, abundantly holy.

Let us continue to call you what we will with honesty and humility. And let us know you, in some form, in moments of great joy and great sorrow, and all times in between.

Amen.

Source: Minister’s Prayer (PDF) by the Rev. Bill Neely, while serving as ministerial intern at Unity Church-Unitarian in St. Paul, Minnesota, delivered November 14, 2004. Used with permission.

Today’s selection ties the ideas from Monday and Wednesday neatly together. Why, in a Unitarian Universalist setting, where people believe in “at most, one god,” is prayer an important part of so many congregations’ liturgy?

What is prayer if it is not talking to a god?

Rev. John Cullinan explored these very questions in this sermon, “Prayer,” preached at the Unitarian Church of Los Alamos, New Mexico this November 4th.

For consideration: Do you pray? Why or why not? Do you think prayer has a place in your congregation’s worship life? Why or why not?

Prayer

by Rev. John Cullinan

I.

I have had a rocky relationship with prayer. Even in my early life as a Roman Catholic, prayer was never a large part of my routine, outside of Sunday Mass. When I put aside the church in my early adulthood, I put aside all thought of prayer as well. And when I returned to the church through the doors of Unitarian Universalism, I returned to a congregation that did not, as a rule, pray. I assumed it was not a UU practice, and at the time, I didn’t feel as though I was missing anything.

My reconnection with prayer began during my time as a hospital chaplain. Prayer is, more often than not, the stock in trade of the chaplain. I assumed I was going to have deep theological conversations with the sick and the dying. I can’t begin to tell you why I assumed that. To say it was a false assumption is being kind.

No, what most folks wanted in the hospital, patients and families alike, was prayer. And I was going to have to find a way to be with them in they way they needed me. I didn’t trust myself to do it “right” in those days. I didn’t feel as though I had an authentic Unitarian Universalist vocabulary for prayer, and I was fearful of winging it. And, since most of the patients in the hospital were Catholic, it seemed logical to fall back on the familiar words of my past.

(Read on … )

This prayer was given exactly four years ago, for Veteran’s Day, by Rev. Kathleen Rolenz, who serves West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church in Rocky River, Ohio.

I choose it today because I feel it exemplifies the ideas in Monday’s post that “If there is a God who listens, then he or she is listening in the people gathered here.” Rev. Rolenz offers a timely message, four additional long years into the same war, and a reminder to all who hear it that we are, after all, in it together as a human family.

For consideration: What kind of public prayers speak most to you and your community? Is private prayer a meaningful practice for you?

Prayer for November 14, 2003

by Rev. Kathleen Rolenz

Let us join our hearts and minds together in the spirit of prayer:
O Holy One, that unites all who are estranged
and challenges all who preach division and exclusion,

We see that unity so often in the eyes of a child, who sees neither race or creed in any eyes that look back, but only whether those are smiling are crying.

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This week, posts will focus on prayer and its use in Unitarian Universalist churches that do not proclaim a universal belief in a higher power.

And this is just the question raised by today’s material, from the Rev. Tom McCready, who serves Hull Unitarian Church in Great Britain. Unitarian churches in Great Britain are members of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches rather than the Unitarian Universalist Association, but proclaim a philosophy of religion that would be right at home in our American congregations:

“WE BELIEVE THAT:

• everyone has the right to seek truth and meaning for themselves.
• the fundamental tools for doing this are your own life experience, your reflection upon it, your intuitive understanding and the promptings of your own conscience.
• the best setting for this is a community that welcomes you for who you are, complete with your beliefs, doubts and questions.”

So with that in mind, here is Rev. McCready’s take on the question, “Who are you praying to?” in a format suitable for a responsive prayer.

Who do you pray to if you believe in prayer, but do not believe in God?

by Rev. Tom McCready

And who, or what do you pray to, if you believe that the sacred depth that binds us together and holds us forever cannot be separated from the reality of ourselves, in order to be prayed to?

Where do you aim your prayers if you truly believe that the beauty and grace and glorious frailty of the human spirit is all the God we need?

If there is a God who listens, then he or she is listening in the people gathered here. And if the great creator spirit who was before the world began is present here among us, it is in the hearts and in the hopes of the people gathered here that that spirit is within reach. Most real, most near, and most fully with us.

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Today I bring you a feast for the eyes: images of stained glass windows from several Unitarian Universalist congregations.

In the words of Rev. Forrest Church of All Souls Church in New York City, “In the Cathedral of the World there are windows beyond number, some long forgotten, covered with many patinas of dust, others revered by millions, the most sacred of shrines. Each in its own way is beautiful. Some are abstract, others representational, some dark and meditative, others bright and dazzling. Each tells a story about the creation of the world, the meaning of history, the purpose of life, the nature of humankind, the mystery of death. The windows of the cathedral are where the light shines through.”

For consideration: What kinds of art are meaningful to you in your church community? What do the artistic choices in a church sanctuary say about that community?

Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst, Massachusetts

the Tiffany Angel

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So we started on Monday with examples of individual congregational mission statements: statements trying, with varying success, to communicate the purpose of gathering in a particular religious community.

Today we explore congregational covenants, the promises that members of a religious community make to one another in determining how they will be together in that community. The lines between these two kinds of statements can be somewhat blurred, but I have tried to select examples that illustrate the difference of intention behind them.

The Unitarian Universalist Association’s Principles and Purposes, part of the by-laws that govern the national organization, are framed as a covenant between congregations, and many individual members use them as a guideline for what a Unitarian Universalist community strives to be, but many congregations have their own statements for how they will be together in addition to the Principles.

The denomination’s Commission on Appraisal wrote a report entitled “Engaging Our Theological Diversity” (very long PDF worth reading), published in 2005, in which they took a snapshot of the state of our congregations and how the movement as a whole copes with the unique position of building communities of faith without the bindings of theological creed. They found that about half of the responding congregations recite a covenant in worship each Sunday (see page 102), and the most commonly used statement is the Williams Covenant, with some variations on the text.

For consideration: How is a covenant different from a mission statement? How does a congregational covenant reflect into the daily lives of individual members?

Covenants

Love is the doctrine of this church, the quest of truth is its sacrament and service is its prayer. To dwell together in peace, to seek knowledge in freedom, to serve humanity in fellowship, to the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the divine, thus do we covenant with each other and with God.

~J. Griswold Williams, Singing the Living Tradition #471 with common adaptation

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