A bonus post for you today — there is a fascinating interview with author and theologian James Carse over on Salon.com, regarding his book The Religious Case Against Belief.

Here’s a brief excerpt:

From Salon.com’s interview with James Carse

I think the vast majority of people would say belief is at the very core of religion. How can you say religion does not involve belief?

It’s an odd thing. Scholars of religion are perfectly aware that belief and religion don’t perfectly overlap. It’s not that they’re completely indifferent to each other, but you can be religious without being a believer. And you can be a believer who’s not religious. Let’s say you want to know what it means to be Jewish. So you draw up a list of beliefs that you think Jews hold. You go down that list and say, “I think I believe all of these.” But does that make you a Jew? Obviously not. Being Jewish is far more and far richer than agreeing to a certain list of beliefs. Now, it is the case that Christians in particular are interested in proper belief and what they call orthodoxy. However, there’s a very uneven track of orthodoxy when you look at the history of Christianity. It’s not at all clear what exactly one should believe.

. . .

Are you religious yourself?

I would say yes, but in the sense that I am endlessly fascinated with the unknowability of what it means to be human, to exist at all. Or as Martin Heidegger asked, why is there something rather than nothing? There’s no answer to that. And yet it hovers behind all of our other answers as an enduring question. For me, it puts a kind of miraculous glow on the world and my experience of the world. So in that sense, I am religious.

What about God? If God is defined as some sort of transcendent reality, do you think God exists?

[Laughs] Frankly, no. But there are so many different conceptions of God. Take, for example, the medieval Christian, Jewish and Islamic mystics. It’s a very rich period from the 12th to the 15th centuries. They began to realize that in each of their traditions, it was impossible to say exactly who God was and what he wants and what he’s doing. In fact, human intelligence has a certain limitation that keeps it from being able to embrace the infinite or the whole. Therefore, every one of our statements about God and the universe is tinged with a degree of ignorance. I would say that I am deeply moved by the thought of an unnameable mystery. If you then ask me, exactly which mystery are you then referring to? I can’t answer. That’s as far as I can go. But it’s got its grip on me, for sure.

Source: Salon.com’s interview with James Carse, author of The Religious Case Against Belief.

A fundamental question for Unitarian Universalists is how to use religious language in a way that reflects the reality of our religious values, since many of the words and concepts we might be drawn to have been claimed by other traditions, particularly more conservative Christian points of view.

The Rev. Dr. Edward Frost explores the concept of “grace” in this reflection from this summer’s issue of Quest, the newsletter of the Church of the Larger Fellowship. He seeks to free the word, and the idea, from its traditional roots, allowing those Unitarian Universalists of differing theological viewpoints to reclaim its power.

Dr. Frost is the Senior Minister Emeritus of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta, Georgia.

Amazing Grace

by Rev. Dr. Edward Frost

I watched the dancer leaping and turning, seemingly weightless, his movements apparently effortless. He made it look so easy that I knew anyone could do it. I could do it! The term that came to mind as I watched was, of course, “graceful,” the art of being at ease, and all parts of the whole in perfect accord and balance. The apparent ease is deceptive. Perhaps one has achieved grace when the struggle beneath it is not apparent. On reflection, the complexity, the discipline by which ease is achieved, becomes obvious. Every muscle has been trained, every movement practiced to the point of exhaustion. The artist has devoted life itself to coming to terms with the lack of ease, with the common state of dis-ease, with imbalance. The artist is in command of time, of event, of self, trusts both the event and the self to be as one. And that is grace.

Grace, when we see it, appears so simple, so natural, so “as it ought to be.” It seems that grace should be our common state. Yet we know that grace is rare, a triumph over awkwardness, a victory over dis-ease. Human existence, in its civilized state, is not normally graceful, harmonious, or in balance, but rather is at odds with itself and the universe. Humanness is divided against itself. Mind against body. Passion against restraint. Thought hunting down feeling to deny it. Spirit against material. Civil demands against private virtue. Future hope against past experience. We live awkwardly, gawkily, in tension, pulled by opposites, struggling to be free, sometimes surrendering to one tug or another just to ease the tension. It was James Thurber who said that just as we find our hearts in a close embrace we discover that our foot is caught in the piano stool.

(Read on … )

Blogger Peacebang recently reflected on the Lord’s Prayer, and I found the words coming into my own mind recently on a Sunday during the time of silence after the sermon, so I did some Googling on Unitarian Universalist approaches to this traditional prayer.

The Rev. Roger Fritts, senior minister at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church in Bethesda, Maryland, preached this sermon on December 15, 2002, regarding his own personal interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer. I think his approach is extremely thoughtful, on both an intellectual and spiritual level.

An Interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer

by Rev. Roger Fritts

Our Father who art in Heaven,
Hallowed be thy name;
Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
And forgive us our trespasses (or debts)
As we forgive those who trespass against us;
(or: As we have forgiven our debtors)
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
(For thine is the kingdom
And the power
And the glory,
Forever.)

-Roman Catholic version with
Protestant changes or additions in italics

According to a 1992 study published in Newsweek, about eighty-eight percent of the people in the United States pray. According to a study of Unitarian Universalists conducted in 1987, fifty-seven percent of us say that we pray occasionally or often. I fall into this group of fifty-seven percent.

During difficult moments of my life I pray. I know that my silent, private prayer will not change the unchangeable. Nevertheless, in moments of doubt and fear my short, silent prayers give me comfort. They help me cope by calming me and soothing my emotions.

Some might say that my prayer is a form or regression. They might suggest that when I pray I am discarding my rational, logical side; I am setting aside what I have learned from science, and returning to my early childhood superstitious beliefs in God as a Santa Claus who will grant my prayer, if I say the right words in the right way.

(Read on … )

We’ve seen two historical contrasting approaches to a religious viewpoint of the natural world, particularly the theory of evolution, from Rev. Jabez Sunderland and French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and now we come to the present.

The 2005 report from the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Commission on Appraisal, Engaging our Theological Diversity (very long PDF), also tackled this question. They took statements from current members of Unitarian Universalist congregations, conducted surveys, and looked at Unitarian Universalist publications, and came up with this summary of a typical Unitarian Universalist understanding of the universe.

How Do We Understand the Universe?

from Engaging Our Theological Diversity, the report of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Commission on Appraisal

One of the primary functions of religion is to provide people with a framework for understanding the physical world and their place in it. The Principle that most clearly expresses contemporary Unitarian Universalist cosmology is belief in the interdependent web of all existence. This guiding Principle fuels much of modern-day UU social justice and advocacy work related to environmentalism, animals’ rights, economic injustice, and homelessness, among other worthy and related causes.

The current UU understanding of an interdependent and interconnected cosmos has evolved from a theology that we can trace back through our Christian roots to the Old Testament book of Genesis. Genesis is the cornerstone for some of the basic cosmology evident in all three Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam): specifically, Genesis 1:24-31 and 9:1-17. The most common interpretations of Genesis hold that human beings are the pinnacle of all creation. We are God’s favored creatures, with everything in creation—all the resources and all the animals—existing for our explicit benefit. Competing liberal interpretations hold that human beings are the custodians of creation, and that our role as custodians invokes great responsibility as well as privilege. Regardless of the interpretation to which one subscribes, both interpretations create a human-centered cosmology—humans are the centerpiece of creation.

(Read on … )

On Wednesday, I gave you the the Rev. David Takahashi Morris’s distillation of the Unitarian Universalist Commission on Appraisal’s report published in 2005, “Engaging our Theological Diversity” (very long PDF).

Today, I give you the sermon that he preached in response to his interpretations of the report, which I find gives us a few more pieces in our individual puzzles of how to answer the fundamental question, “What is Unitarian Universalism?” Rev. Takahashi Morris is co-minister at Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, Virginia, and preached this sermon on December 5, 2005.

Three D’s and an F: Unitarian Universalist Theology

Rev. David Takahashi Morris

In a community as liberally sprinkled with teachers, scholars, and others connected with education as ours, I know the title of today’s sermon has a certain ominous resonance. There are certainly those who would say that three “d’s” and an “f” make a pretty accurate report card for Unitarian Universalist theology. Critics argue that without a creed or an easily articulated belief statement, we are a religion that offers no solid ground to stand on. And in a troubled time, a religion without solid ground can’t be much of a refuge.

(Read on … )

Why harp on this question, “What is Unitarian Universalism?”

It seems there is no end to materials that explore the idea of Unitarian Universalist identity. As a faith movement of individuals bound in community without adherence to dogma or doctrine, we struggle with limited human language to express just what it is that draws us together. We try to use reason in all things, even when faced with the ineffable, and therefore we strive to explain the unexplainable.

Personally, I am drawn to these discussions because I feel it is vitally important that we as individuals have the tools to reach out beyond our congregations, to bring our “Good News” out into the world to those who would join us. By exploring ideas and language from many sources, it is my sincere hope to provide a variety of these tools to choose from, so that perhaps, when an individual is asked, “What is your church all about?” they can draw upon language that makes sense to them in order to answer coherently.

So, with these things in mind, today we look again at the report from the Unitarian Universalist Commission on Appraisal published in 2005, “Engaging our Theological Diversity” (very long PDF), as distilled into these twelve statements by the Rev. David Takahashi Morris, co-minister at Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, Virginia.

For consideration: As a Unitarian Universalist, how do you identify with these statements? Are there any that do not resonate with you, or any that resonate strongly?

Unitarian Universalist Theological Identity

Adapted by Rev. David Takahashi Morris from Engaging Our Theological Diversity, A Report from the Commission on Appraisal of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

Do all diverse Unitarian Universalists stand upon any shared theological ground? Respecting the identity of individual perspective we offer the following statements of who Unitarian Universalists are theologically.

1. We are a grounded faith. We are a faith with roots, however lightly held, that go back two thousand years and more.
2. We are an ecological faith. In the West, the vision of interconnectedness has had an uphill struggle to displace a more hierarchical vision of the nature of the cosmos. We have placed the interdependent web squarely at the center of our shared worldview.

(Read on … )

Today’s selection is really a treat. I went looking for Unitarian Universalist perspectives on the events in Pearl Harbor, the attack that happened on this day in 1941, and came across the writings of Rev. John B. Isom (December 2, 1909 - April 23, 2004), who served as an Army chaplain during World War II. He was a Baptist minister, who then underwent a theological crisis and became a Unitarian in 1955. He served churches in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Louisville, Kentucky, Wichita, Kansas, and the First Unitarian Church of Des Moines, Iowa, where he was named an emeritus in 1975.

Rev. Isom was quite a prolific writer, and his children and grandchildren have collected many of his works for the public to read. The excerpt I chose for today is from “As I Remember Me,” Rev. Isom’s memoir, specifically dealing with his theological crisis. His reading of Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest for the Historic Jesus was a major tipping point for him, which he describes here. What strikes me is the pain that is evident in Rev. Isom’s realizations that he can no longer believe what he was raised to believe, and his sense of loss as he comes to these realizations.

I hear echoes of the sermon I posted last Friday, in which the Rev. James Covington states, “No, my friends, you and I are not free to believe anything we choose. You and I believe what we must. The beauty and genius of a faith like ours is that we are not asked to pretend to believe things we do not believe. You and I are not free to choose what we believe, but we are free to stay with our religious community when we grow and when we change our minds.”

For consideration: Have you experienced a crisis of faith? Have you experienced a conversion to Unitarian Universalism, not just from another religion, but perhaps a moment of realization of your commitment to your faith?

From “As I Remember Me”

by Rev. John B. Isom

When I went to Spartanburg, as I have already confessed, I had some serious doubt about some things I was expected to believe and teach as a Baptist minister. I knew then that I had no hard evidence to justify me believing some of the very basic assumptions which were essential to the Christian faith of Baptists and most other Christian believers, such as the Bible being the holy word of a supernatural being called God, who created the heavens and the earth and all life therein; the supernatural events associated around the birth, life and death of Jesus; Heaven and Hell as places for the eternal abode of all human beings. By the time I read “The Quest for the Historic Jesus” I knew I had no evidence for believing such assumptions. All I had left was a very dim hope that such evidence might still be found. After reading “The Quest for the Historic Jesus” that dim hope was no longer possible. There are a number of reasons why that book made me face up to the truth of my disbelief in the basic essentials of the faith as taught in most Christian churches.

(Read on … )