PeaceBang

Passionate Does Not Equal Fundamentalist

September 4, 2007 on 2:52 pm | In Theological Reflection, Unitarian Universalism | Comments Off

I went to a wonderful service Sunday morning at a Methodist church. I love this congregation and have worshipped with them four or five times this summer: they’re friendly, warm, fun, and faithful. I love that they take up an offering for Urban Responsibility and a second one for the church. Their pastor is a delight and I adore their music program.

I was there with my friend Plip Plop Le Chevre (that’s how you would know him, anyway), another UU Christian, and we stayed for the entire two-hour service feeling inspired and grateful. I think that any worshiping community that can sustain a spirit of inspiration, faithfulness and gratitude for two full hours is pretty special. And then we went and had soul food at Chef Lee’s in Dorchester. (Say “amen,” somebody!”)

Later on it occurred to me that the vast majority of Unitarian Universalists of my acquaintance would have gotten out of that Methodist church as fast as they could, rejecting its enthusiastic, praise-filled style of worship as way too evangelical and fundamentalist — two words that I hear used synonymously throughout our denomination.

Of course, this church is absolutely not a fundamentalist church. It is, however, evangelical, and I am sorry that so few UUs know the difference, or seem to care. For them, as for a large number of the unchurched folk I meet in my travels, “Christianity” is a monolith, an empire, and a danger. Conservative fundamentalists have accomplished this in the United States with their political machinations and imperialism masked as piety, but it pains me that so many of my co-religionists are totally unable to “read” Christian perspectives, environments or conversations with any nuanced understanding of which of the many Christianities is being communicated therein.

For example, we unabashedly praised God on Sunday, singing our hearts out to the sound of drums, trumpet, organ and piano. We waved our hands in the air at times, we involved our bodies, we clapped, we cried, we shouted. We made a joyful noise unto the Lord. We listened carefully to Scripture passages and “amen’d” the words of the gospels and the prophets. This doesn’t mean that we checked our brains at the door or that we make all our decisions by flinging open the Bible and asking God to tell us what to do by showing us just the right passage. It does mean, however, that we were just as emotionally and viscerally involved in the act of worship as intellectually so, and this by choice, not by credulity or coercion.

When we prayed fervently for the coming of the Holy Spirit and for the healing through Christ Jesus, it was by faith and through love, not because we don’t equally believe in human agency and in the knowledge of the secular sciences. How many Christianity-fearing UUs and others understand or accept that? Witnessing our prayers, would they assume that we are naive bliss-ninnies? Would they assume that inherent in our petitions was a wish that everyone would believe as Christians do?

My experience informs me that they very likely would, and they would be wrong. Would they assume that our use of the words “Christ” and “King” and “Almighty” represent respect for patriarchy, domination and exclusion of free-thought? They might, and again — they would be so very wrong. This particular congregation, in fact, is an African-American congregation that is openly welcoming of sexual minorities and has many women in leadership. A rare and wonderful combination!
While the Church is still an extremely sexist, homophobic institution in the global sense, non-Christian religious people (and I include Unitarian Universalists in that category) should know how to distinguish when they are in a conservative environment and when they are in a liberal or liberationist one. It is a pastoral failure among us that so few of our lay people can, and a denominational embarrassment that so many of our ministers are likewise hampered by knee-jerk Christophobia.

Unitarian Universalists offer a religious education curriculum for middle school aged children that requires that they visit various houses of worship and learn the basic theological tenets of various world religions. It is a great curriculum, yet it fails our youth if we accept that they walk away with a a sense that any of these faith traditions are monolithic. The world is changing and we are responsible for helping them understand that in a global culture we should not think of “Buddhism” but “Buddhisms” and of “Islams” rather than “Islam.” It is no different for Christianity. In America, where liberal religion flourishes, many faith traditions and communities are heavily dosed with the same Enlightenment values that define our own UUism. We cannot celebrate and leverage this fact if we do not know it in the first place; if we insist on UU terminal uniqueness as special bearers of the flag of Freedom, Reason and Tolerance.

This summer I have worshiped with Episcopalians in Portland, OR, with Methodists in Boston and Wellesley, MA and in Seattle, Washington. I have worshiped with the United Church of Christ community and with Unitarian Universalists. While the forms of worship were very different between these disparate groups, the political and social goals were entirely compatible, as were the tendency to skepticism, irreverence, cultural sophistication and high levels of intellectual curiosity and engagement.

Why should Unitarian Universalists care to challenge and correct our continued immaturity about Christianities in this country? Because it is one of the biggest elephants in our living room. Because the overwhelming majority of our members, friends and visitors are former Christians or cultural Christians, and because we are kidding ourselves if we actually think we are a new, post-modernist religion that’s a little bit of every world religion thrillingly rolled up into one and liberally sprinkled with the best of humanist philosophy. We are not, and even if it is our vision to become this, we still have to deal with the sad fact of our hypocritical and hostile rejection of the faith of our foremothers and fathers, and confront the ways that that rejection makes a mockery of our claims to tolerance and rationality.

As Unitarian Universalist ministers gear up for the fall and collegial gatherings, I hope that they will take under consideration our wide-spread and generally accepted ignorance and prejudice against Christianities among us. I hope that as they plan their RE courses and sermons that they will plan to acquaint or reacquaint their congregations with Christianities in such a way as to bring about wisdom and understanding and a sense of fellowship rather than suspicion and fear. As Albert Einstein said, “Nothing in life is to be feared — it is to be understood.”

I have a goal in this, and a deep wish. My wish is that someday, even the most angry, Christian-suspicious Unitarian Universalists will be able to hear selections from the Bible, traditional Christian hymns, and the name of Jesus in sermons with just as peaceful a heart and steady blood pressure as they do hearing the poetry of Mary Oliver or segments from the Dhammapada. We cannot be the world religion many of us would love to become and the force for good we want to be if we consistently give the message that “everything is okay but Christianity” or “We will warmly support your spiritual path everywhere but down Jesus Street.”

While I have given up hoping that there will ever be a day when I won’t be asked everywhere I go how I can be a UU and be a Christian, I will never stop believing that my people can — and will — finally confront and outgrow our willful ignorance and assumptions about who Christians really are. I don’t believe that we need to be that special and precious anymore. We are forty-six years old now, well into middle age, and it’s time to stop behaving like rebellious adolescents.

Those who are admirers of UU principles and goals but have directly experienced our religious prejudices are watching and waiting. From what I have heard everywhere I go, we have a brilliant religious concept with a noble heritage but are failing miserably to live up to our own potential as the deep ecumenists we once claimed to be. How many times have I heard this summer, “You’re a Unitarian Universalist? How nice to have you among us. We always hear that you don’t “do” Christianity.”
(Worse, one woman had heard that UUs don’t LIKE Christians!)
This is all said with a twinkle in the eye, but I know that behind the twinkle is a real and hurtful experience. Or, “You’re a UU? I used to go to the _________ Unitarian Universalist congregation but when I got interested in Christianity they had nothing for me, and I got the distinct impression that I should leave.”

No comments this time, friends. I’ve discussed this ad nauseum for many years and have gone round and round arguing about it. I have neither the time nor the interest in arguing or debating right now. File this under “Just Sharing.”