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The Framework
want to talk about an issue this morning that affects every single
person in this congregation, in fact everyone who is in any way
spiritual or religious. That issue is a language of reverence. Those of
you who have been here awhile had a hands-on experience with language of
reverence last year when you re-worked the congregation’s Affirmation
Statement after discussion about its ‘God’ language. Whether or not you
were here for that discussion, this question of reverential language is
on-going, especially in free religion grounded on individual freedom of
spiritual path. Perhaps my addressing Language of Reverence today will
offer a retro-active context for you who were here for the Affirmation
discussion. Perhaps for newcomers, Language of Reverence will explain
more about Unitarian Universalism.
And just in case you are wondering where I’m going --- no, I’m not going
to tell this congregation ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ on the use of God language, or
any other reverential language, for that matter. Nor will I declare a
particular theological direction for this congregation. That would
interfere with congregational polity. What I hope I can do is offer more
groundwork for how we as a free religious congregation deal with issues
of religious language.
The Source of the Fuss
So let’s go back to a significant event in Unitarian Universalism in
January 2003, five years ago. The then new President of the Unitarian
Universalist Association, William Sinkford, caused a stir way beyond the
change that he intended to be a catalyst for. That stir has affected
virtually every congregation, for the good, in my view. The stir
indicates just how much this matters to us --- this use of language to
express religious experiences.
Back in 2003, in Fort Worth, Texas, President Sinkford delivered a
sermon titled ‘The Language of Faith.’ In this sermon, he called on
Unitarian Universalists to reflect on the religious language they use.
He noted that the first forty years of this denomination --- since
merger in 1961 --- was something of a youthful period. Unitarian
Universalists were admittedly on the margins of the world’s religions,
radical but not very well known. Sinkford’s goal for his Presidency has
been to move into a more mature phase, and he has done much to
accomplish that goal.
Sinkford addressed ‘Language of Faith’ because he was concerned that
this non-creedal denomination used hardly any language that the rest of
the world recognized as ‘religious.’ As we heard yesterday during our
‘Transition’ workshop, there was open defiance of habits that looked
like mainstream religion. We established ‘fellowships,’ not ‘churches;’
we listened to ‘speakers’ not ‘preachers.’ Sinkford observed that the
words most commonly used by all Unitarian Universalists are the Seven
Principles --- you might want to turn to the back of the order of
service to review these. He pointed out that the Principles contain not
one word of traditional religious language: not ‘god’ or ‘worship’ or
‘faith’, not even ‘love.’ They are in fact not theological statements,
but value statements, that ground the covenant for how we walk together.
Value statements are essential to a covenantal religion because they
guide us on how to be together. However, they don’t address how we name
and talk about what is sacred to us.
Having reverential language is important for at least two reasons. One,
lacking adequate reverential language makes it challenging to connect
with the larger world. Such religious outreach is especially important
now because, more and more, religious seekers say they are seeking
spirituality. Two, even more compelling for Sinkford was the question of
whether our language was adequately serving the spiritual needs of our
own members. Did we have enough vocabulary, ready on our tongues, to
express the personal yearnings that are some of the reasons people come
to church in the first place? Did we have sufficient vocabulary to
express our deep needs during those intense moments of life: at birth,
at dying, at life’s celebrations and milestones.
You might imagine the reactivity this call to reverential language
generated. Sinkford expected some pushback, but he did not expect the
eruption the Monday morning after his sermon, after a newspaper reporter
in Fort Worth misrepresented the story, reporting that Sinkford had
arbitrarily announced a return ‘God-language’ and Christian orientation
to the Principles. From the ministers’ email chat list to the national
press, there were charges of ‘creeping creedalism.’ Some were sure this
was Sinkford’s devious plan to push out humanists, atheists, agnostics,
and pagans for good. In fact, the President’s goals were none of these.
He clearly stated that ‘religious language doesn’t have to mean “God
talk”.’ He simply called for more language ‘that would allow us to
capture the possibility of reverence, to talk about human agency in
theological terms, so to frame our world guided by what we find of
ultimate importance.’ We’ve come a long way since 2003. Last year,
Sinkford himself said, “I smile to myself as UUs who believed that I was
going to destroy this community, now use ‘the language of reverence’ as
if they invented the term. There is less argument about whether humanism
or a more spiritual practice should inform our being together in
community. In more and more of our congregations, worship is more
centered and centering, more celebratory and profound that I observed
just a few years ago.”
Meaning of Religion
One of the ways Sinkford expected to meet resistance came from many who
said that his call for reverential language sounded too ‘religious.’....
What am I missing here ... if Unitarian Universalism is a religion, then
why would we defer from using religious language? Perhaps some review of
what it means to be religious reminds us of the wide range of religious
experience in the world.
Let’s recall that the root meaning of ‘religion’ is ‘re-binding:’
religion recognizes the common questions of human intimacy and ultimacy.
Rev. Forrest Church explained ‘religion’ much more succinctly, as ‘our
response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die.’ Joseph
Campbell among others, taught us about religious archetypes, and how
humans are driven by a need to find in daily life some meaning, some
signs of universal significance. The systematic theologian Thandeka
writes that the religious response is an affective response, a response
first of the heart that arises through human experience, a pre-verbal
response that we then are called to name. Having religious experiences
is inherent in humans. Religious experiences include such qualities as
1) having a sense mystery --- that awe when looking up at the night sky;
2) feeling the oneness of all things --- that sense of connections to
something outside ourselves; 3) or having a sense of meaning and
gratitude for life. Note that the definition of ‘religion’ does not
include a supernatural being, especially an old man with a white beard.
Also note that not all religions are theistic, and certainly not all are
monotheistic.
In a state of being religious, we feel reverence for experiences that
deeply touch us, and we engage in reverential acts such as worship, a
time to hold up that which we regard as of the highest meaning and
value. This quality of reverence is what makes worship different from
other times when we are together in our religious communities.
In contrast to those countering Sinkford, through the years I’ve heard
many congregants and ministers lament that they have trouble finding
spiritual depth in this faith. One minister, the Rev. Kendyl Gibbons, a
devoted humanist admitted that without a repertoire of reverential
language, this way of religion had many drawbacks for her as she was
growing up. She wrote : “A religious tradition that does not help its
members discover meaningful and satisfying ways of expressing and
responding to the human experiences of reverence that happen in the
course of their human lives is missing a crucial and central piece of
its function. We are not dealing in debate or persuasion here. We are
talking about how we --- each of us in our uniquely constituted beings
--- recognize and understand and make sense of that unbidden,
overwhelming awe at the wonder, magnificence, danger, demand, and
delight of being alive.”
She named three reasons to develop a language of reverence: 1) to
adequately respond to those moments of awe that come along when we least
expect them; 2) to describe these experiences to others; and 3) to
solicit such experiences in ourselves and others, as any leader of
worship services does on a regular basis. For her, and others, this is
not a conversation about whether we use the ‘G-word’ or not. This is a
conversation about each of us having vocabulary readily available to
express the reverential moments all humans experience.
Another reviewer recently offered a parallel critique of free religion.
Not long after Sinkford’s sermon, Church consultant Michael Durall wrote
a book called The Almost Church in which he challenged UU and mainstream
churches to examine how they are keeping up with the times. Are we
responding to the religious yearnings of the twenty-first century? Are
we driven forward by a mission, rather than existing for the greater
self-enlightenment and entertainment of our individual selves? Durall
also cautioned us not to confuse secular issues with the work of the
church, and to be realistic about change that we can actually affect
through social action. And he warned against gradualism: taking a
middle-of-the-road, trying-to-please-everyone, don’t-rock-the-boat
attitude to just about everything in congregational life.
Solutions: returning to tradition religious
language
So, we have been challenged to engage in more reverential language, but
how do we do that. Well, there are many possibilities. Personally,
Sinkford himself uses much traditional religious language, especially
God language, through a liberal lens. Sinkford grew up as a ‘rabid’ ---
his word --- Humanist UU. Then when his son Billy was fifteen, Sinkford
had a life-changing experience with the Holy. Billy had overdosed on
drugs and it was unclear whether he would live. As Sinkford the arch
humanist sat in the hospital, he started praying, ... selfish prayers
for forgiveness, prayers for all that was left unsaid, prayers that
Billy would live. Then he felt ‘the hands of a loving universe’ ---
hands of the Spirit of Life --- reach out and hold him. And he knew they
were holding Billy as well. He sensed that there was a love that would
never abandon either of them.
Billy lived, and Sinkford committed himself to working for better ways
of talking about the holy. He does not apologize for using God language.
For him, God is a spiritual presence that keeps the world running. He
would agree with Rev. Forrest Church’s explanation, that ‘God is not
God’s name. God is my name for the mystery that looms within and arches
beyond the limits of my being, (like) ‘spirit of life,’ or ‘ground of
being.’ One reason Sinkford intentionally uses traditional religious
language is to do his small part to keep religious conservatives from
co-opting it. In far too many corners of modern life, simply the sense
of ‘being religious’ has come to connote conservative religion, and
liberals have let them get away with it.
Overall, I come down on the side of President Sinkford to use
traditional religious vocabulary with liberal meanings, lest we
surrender the language completely. For example, bringing to our use of
God language the possibility that god is a woman, is not only returning
to representations as known in pre-historic cultures, but it has been
life-changing for many women for whom the authoritarian-man-with-a-beard
God just wasn’t working work at all.
Other Solutions to reverential language:
humanist and poetic
I also know very well that for many coming to Unitarian Universalism
from previous religious experiences, especially out of hurts,
traditional language is so ingrained that to use this vocabulary only
invokes past meanings. The beauty of our free way is that we do have
choices: no one way to talk about the Holy. For example, many religious
humanists look to human experience for reverential language. They
describe the holy as acts of the rational mind, or of science. More
recently, humanists are turning to the natural world, of which humans
are one part. Naturalist humanists such as Unitarian Universalist, the
Rev. William Murry, whom I talked about last fall, describe the holy as
the story of the universe, for example. The holy is the stars, or the
mountains, or the tiny caterpillar on a bush.
Another solution to reverential language is poetry. Unitarian
Universalist minister, the Rev. Laurel Hallman, uses poetry as her
window into the holy. With its metaphorical power, poetry goes beyond
‘calcified religious language’ that opens her up to the sacred. Through
its capacity to create cognitive dissonance, poetry helps her ‘connect
to the universal yearnings of all humankind’ and constantly find new
perspectives on life. If not poetry, she calls us to other creativity
that will open up, not shut down, our contact with the holy.
Applications to CUUC
So what does all this talk about language have to do with any of us:
with you, with me, with this congregation? Talk about reverential
language is not just an exercise in rhetoric. It has practical, deeply
heartfelt implications, as many of you experienced during the reworking
of the Affirmation Statement.
What does this have to do with this congregation? For starters, that
this congregation was willing to engage in the affirmation discussion
last year says much about your --- I say ‘your’ because I wasn’t here
yet ---willingness to tackle potentially divisive issues and emerge
whole on the other side. This congregation has gone much beyond being an
‘Almost Church,’ to being a community that knows how to speak truth in
love, to ground conversation in the mission of the whole, not in the
needs of a few persons, and to emerge all the stronger for it. I am
pleased to see that this is not an ‘Almost Church,’ because I have no
intention of being an ‘Almost Minister.’ As a minister, I am called to
serve the full religious experience of human existence, and to do so in
a liberal way. As indicated by the very productive conversations at
yesterday’s Transitions Workshop, it seems that you too, the
congregation, are committed to going forward as a full, mission-centered
congregation. I would suggest that we make good partners, in our full,
shared ministry together.
But let’s look at this question of reverential language more
practically. Because this is a Living Religious tradition, know well, my
friends, that this question of what words we use in the affirmation is
not closed. It will come up again in the future. Now, rather than a
rolling of eyes and a shaking of heads at the prospect of more
conversation about God-language, should we not instead rejoice that we
ARE part of a religious movement in which such conversation is possible
in the first place? We are not told top-down how to speak, and we are
not entrenched in stagnant theology. We are a Living Tradition, and we
have not only the possibility but the responsibility to move this
congregation forward, from this place of today to untold places of
tomorrow.
Let us also remember another important aspect of that Affirmation
discussion : that there is no ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ no ‘winners’ and
‘losers.’ In any given congregational issue in which one solution must
be reached, each of us is still free to express personal truths as we
understand them. This is the unity in our diversity: our common respect
for the individual paths of each person. That is, the word ‘God’ was
removed from the collective affirmation statement, but no one is obliged
to leave this word out, or is prevented from using God-language in other
contexts. I say ‘God’ in many conversations with you, and I will
continue to do so: ‘God’ is one of many ways I express the holy, and I
trust that each of us respects everyone’s individual choice of
reverential language.
To suggest yet more pragmatic answers to what this conversation has to
do with us, I can suggest reading material that you might want to
incorporate into adult ed classes or other discussions. A Language of
Reverence has five essays, good for a five-session class. The Almost
Church, is a short read and will enhance your appreciation for all the
good things this congregation is doing.
Conclusion
For ourselves and others in this congregation, let us remember why
people go to church. We don’t go to church to primarily learn something
--- we can do that in the academic classroom. We don’t go to church
primarily to implement social change --- public and social agencies with
much more clout that we have can do that much more effectively. We don’t
even go to church to drink coffee --- shopping mall coffee shops do
coffee much better than we do.
People go to church to nurture their spirit, to give voice to hopes and
despair, to connect with others in experiences beyond the psychological
or the political. People go to church --- we go to church --- to seek
personal transformation and to open and touch our own hearts and the
hearts of others.
May we remember to engage in reverential language, not matter what its
particular vocabulary, so to make that transformation of the heart all
the more meaningful. May we each explain the holy as each of us
understands and experiences it.
MAY IT BE SO.
Please do not copy or reproduce without permission of the
author.
Gibbons just hoped that whatever language we develop, that it be
‘truthful, clear, and well-informed.’
He also noted that we do draw from six religious Sources ---
Judeo-Christian, nature, humanism, world religion --- but he questioned
how effectively these sources were informing our own use of language.
For one, the orientation of many in humanism made us less given to
traditional religious langauge.---We listen to ‘speakers,’ not
’preachers,’ we gather for ‘meetings,’ not ‘worship.’ For another, our
multi-faith orientation makes some of us a bit reluctant to name our
religious language in the presence of others for fear that we offend
others, or others disagree with our language. By 2003 we had become a
denomination trying to keep peace with one another. His goal wasn’t
choosing one source over the others: that is, his goal wasn’t setting up
winners and losers. His goal was to expand our horizons vocabulary wise.
Rev Gibbons likewise cautions us against thinking that ‘we must dispense
with all traditional language, symbols, and concepts in order to speak
about that which is deepest and dearest.” We should not assume that no
human being were ever before so clever, so profound, or so committed as
we are, that those who have been down the path of life before us have no
widsom to teach, that we can learn nothing for all that they have left
to us.’ We ‘in our adolescent hubris’ should not think that we know
better’ because ‘genuine human language is a collective enterprise.’ In
the Hebrew Bible, for instances, there are many explorations and
interpretations for how to name the holy.
God language has, of course, been around a very long time, and humans
through the ages have grappled with its usage.
As part of that sermon back in Fort Worth in 2003, President Sinkford
urged us to write our elevator speeches. If you’ve not done that yet, I
urge you to do so: a 25-word statement explaining this church you are
part of, or that you have just joined today, that you could say to a
perfect stranger during the course of a ride in an elevator. And to get
to know better some of the official language of Unitarian Universalism,
buy a ticket from Sue Fraley for the performance of the cantata Sources,
a new composition, the words by Rev. Gibbons who I cited in this sermon,
based on the text of the six sources.
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