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Fourth Principle: Free and Responsible Search For Truth and Meaning

I am working on a sermon on the fourth UU Principle: “we covenant to affirm and promote…A free and responsible search for truth and meaning.”

In agreement with Paige Getty’s fine essay on the principle in the new collection, The Seven Principles in Word and Worship, I am focusing on Unitarian Universalism’s love of freedom in religious inquiry and practice but lack of understanding or agreement about what constitutes “responsible.”

In the older six principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the free search for truth and meaning was the first principle. It read,

To strengthen one another in a free and disciplined search for truth as the foundation of our religious fellowship.

Now isn’t that interesting? What I love there is the use of the word “disciplined,” which, to my ears, rings with a kind of integrity and commitment that the murkier “responsible” does not evoke.

For those who see UUism as a smorgasbord of world religions, this seems a particularly important principle. For instance, how do we “responsibly” or in a disciplined way engage with Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Sufism, Native Americans spirituality in our congregations and as individuals? Is it responsible for me to include a Muslim reading in worship? I like to think so. However, it is important for me to take responsibility for the fact that many Muslims would vehemently disagree with me. Therefore, as part of my religious discipline I am obligated to study and try to understand more about the various religions I am quoting or referencing of a Sunday morning beyond convenient “we are the world” sentimentalism.

It’s hard work. And it’s work we don’t do well enough.

It seems to me that UUs have yet to acknowledge the fact that while we have made it our “good news” to affirm and proclaim the essential harmony between world faith traditions, we have done so with little or no input or consultation with adherents of those faith traditions. We therefore operate on the assumption that religions “belong” to everyone and anyone who wants to claim them. I wish this was so, but it is not. Religions can only be responsibly understood in their time, place and cultural context. If we want to be a world religion religion, we must take the study of them far more seriously and make education in world religions a staple of our adult religious education offerings. I know that some congregations do this, but not many. Nor has the UUA provided curriculum to help with this knowledge deficit.

While much of the religious world is entering into dialog based on an assumption that the specificity of tradition means something real which no parties to the conversations desire to minimize or ignore, Unitarian Universalist liturgical materials are still a happy mash-up of phrases, readings and sound bites taken entirely out of a context we neither have the time nor the interest to fully study. Our worshipers go away with the sense that we are a delightful Chinese buffet of beliefs respectfully culled from all the world traditions. It would be more honest to say that we have rather taken attractive bits and pieces from various traditions and employed them in the service of our liberal vision.

Is this wrong, unethical, and sinister, as our opponents charge? Or is it merely optimistic, creative, and charmingly anachronistic?

For all the Unitarian Universalists out there who define our faith tradition as a kind of new world religion among world religions, how can we responsibly theologically educate the next generation of UUs (both youth and come-outers) to participate in that vision?

I ask because I do not see UUism as a world religion, but as an essentially humanistic religious community that gathers in covenanted community to do the work of individual and societal transformation guided by its foundational liberal Christian values, more contemporary Humanist wisdom and the theological insights of various world religions. The insights of various world religions, in my opinion, comes primarily from serious students and practitioners of those world religions, not from the general UU community.

I’ll stop there and let you comment.

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The Pastoral Covenant

A case study we looked at in class today has got me thinking.

I know we’re trained as clergy to observe pastoral confidentiality, and that that’s part of the implicit covenant between us and our parishioners when they come to us for advice and counsel.

We are also expected to listen empathically and to represent God’s love to them. For non-theists, same general idea. Love is love and we’re expected to be in loving relationship with our people.

All good so far. Everyone knows those things.

But what about, for lack of a better word, chastisement? Or maybe I’ll say “spiritual correction?” Do we expect that these days? In the more liberal churches, I mean?

Here’s what I’m thinking. If I go to my minister and confess something I know is unethical, do I not, at some level of my being either expect or even secretly hope that he or she will bust me on it? I don’t mean in a judgmental, punishing way, but in an honest and theologically clear way? I think I would. If folks think of their clergyperson as someone they can tell anything to, that’s great! If they think their clergyperson will listen attentively to everything they say and never venture an opinion about it, I don’t think that’s so great.

In the case study today we looked at today, a female pastor (and D.Min. student) went to her seminary dean — a minister with whom she was friendly– and told her about the wonderful relationship she was having with a married man in the community. There’s a lot more to it, but that’s the gist. In this situation, the roles are very blurry — of course, the woman receiving this troubling information wasn’t the confessor’s pastor.
In trying to work this out (“why did she reveal this? what should the other minister have done?) the class considered Jesus’ question, “What do you need from me?”
Some folks thought that the woman needed attentive listening and understanding.
I thought she needed that, too, but also the proverbial smack upside the head. I figured that if she went to a minister with this confession, she must on some level be ready to hear a dissenting opinion on her decision to carry on a long-term affair. I figured that it would be most UNloving to deny her that, in fact.

Which led me to think about the unspoken covenant between parish ministers and their parishioners — isn’t part of the reason we join a church and stay with it to become well-known and loved by our pastors? And doesn’t part of the strength and mutuality of that relationship come from knowing that our pastor cares enough about us to actually try to help us stay healthy, whole and out of trouble?

I hope we haven’t lost that. While I don’t condone clerical shaming and judging, I think we’re like the tough old auntie on the porch who, when she sees you come home way past curfew, smelling like gin and with your shirt on backwards, whaps you upside the head with the magazine she’s been reading and says, “Girl, what ARE you thinking?” Then she pats the step next to her and you sit down and spill it all out how you’re seeing that bad boy Mickey Santelli on the sly, and she listens and goes, “mmmm hmmm” and when you’re all done she says, “Well, I just know you can do better than that, honey. And the next time you want to sneak out with ole Mickey, you just come see me and we’ll find something more productive for you to do with those hands of yours.”

Do clergy feel that they can be, not just listeners, but honest responders? Or is that too, I don’t know, authoritarian these days?