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Brunner suggests: “The church exists by mission as fire exists by
burning.” And a careful reading of church consultants reveals a firm
belief that all powerful, growing religious institutions share three
priority characteristics:
- A strong devotion to a clearly stated religious mission.
- A cadre of basic leadership committed to this mission above all
else.
- An organization designed to maximize the effectiveness of
this mission.
With that said, something else must be noted, namely, that nothing
has been more troubling in our religious movement over the past fifty
years than the notion of mission. We seem to have been confused about
its definition, wondered why it was important and replaced it with less
threatening substitutes. The three most popular of these substitutes
have been:
- Community---while community is focal in our
movement, it can also easily be nothing more than an embracing haven
for frustrated liberals.
- Social Action---while social action is an
imperative in our movement, it can also be nothing more than an
activity that temporarily relieves the guilt of theological
irrelevance.
- and, political correctness---while being
politically correct is consistent with the values of our movement it
can also be nothing more than a tactic that ignores experience and
wisdom in favor of social posturing.
So rather than engage the challenge of clarifying our mission, we
have taken the easy approach of leaving it up to each individual
congregation to come up with its own definition. In other words, we have
declared religious mission to be up for grabs. The end result of this
approach has been continued mission confusion and the social impotence
of an over-stressed diversity.
Two historical quotations underscore why clarity of mission is so
important to any institution:
- Montaigne observes: “No wind blows in favor of the ship without
a port of destination.”
- and RF Mager avows: “If you don’t know where you are going
you are liable to end up some place else.”
Our confusion about mission is reminiscent of a Hagar The
Horrible cartoon. It is of a Viking boat. Some of the oarsmen are
paddling with the blade of the oar and some with the handle of the oar.
Some are rowing forwards and some are rowing backwards. The boat is
moving in aimless circles and zigzags. And, Hagar, standing at the helm
with hands cupped around his mouth, is shouting: “Will you quit saying
different strokes for different folks!”
The underlying message of the cartoon captures a principle that
governs all religious institutional life, that the power to move in
concerted direction and to create positive social change lies in
commonality and not in diversity.
Another problem related to this misbegotten stress on diversity is
that when a congregation does attempt to create a mission statement, it
is usually not a mission statement at all, rather, a long listing of
facets of ministry created to honor diversity. Such listings also
normally fail to distinguish between mission and ministry. Mission is
why a congregation exists. Ministry is everything it does to fulfill
this mission. The distinction is substantive.
It seems to me that there are two clues that might lead us to an
accurate definition of religious mission.
The first clue is found in the type of institution for which a
congregation is created. It is society that creates the institutions
required to serve its needs. And the type of institution it creates
defines that institution’s social mission. A governmental institution is
created to serve society’s political needs. An educational institution
is created to serve society’s learning needs. A financial institution is
created to serve a society’s economic needs. And, a religious
institution is created to serve society’s meaning needs. Strange, don’t
you think, that while we never question the obvious mission of the
governmental or educational or financial institution we are forever
questioning the mission of the religious institution.
A second clue to an institution’s mission is the circumstance that
provoked its birth. It seems obvious that the first institution society
created was the community. And it was out of this first creation that
all other institutional needs emerged.
It is possible that the second institutional need was what we, of the
modern world, call religion. Back when we lived in caves, there was
little to ponder except survival in a savage and terrifying environment.
But then came art and language, howsoever primitive, and meaning making
was born. Critical to this meaning making were answers to the compelling
questions inherent in the mystery of their environment. So there arose
an institution in the midst of community which function was to enter
this mystery and return with answers that gave meaning to human
existence and direction to human community. Thus, the meaning
institution was born.
At first, this institution seems to have been a single person that
was called by many different names. Joe, while the rest of us go out and
hunt and gather, you sit on that rock over there and ponder what this
whole big mess we are in is all about. And so, Joe sat on the rock and
pondered and sought to create meaning. And the community took with
seriousness what Joe concluded from his pondering. However, given the
passage of time, this pondering enterprise grew in both importance and
power and was finally called religion, which means to bind together,
because that is precisely what its answers did for the community. So,
religion, and its answers to life’s mysteries, became the holy
enterprise, the sacred pursuit that infused community with a sense of
meaning and purpose upon the earth.
However, as population grew and communities proliferated, so did
various religions. But one thing remained the same, the purpose for
which society had created religion. Thus, whether it is a Jewish Temple,
an Islamic Mosque, a Catholic Church, a Southern Baptist Church or a
Unitarian Universalist congregation, they all have the same mission.
They all exist for the same reason, a reason created by society, itself.
What, then, distinguishes between all of these religions? Their
distinctions are that they all answer life’s compelling questions of
mystery differently, thus, giving different meaning and direction to
community living. And these differences become critical to human
destiny.
So, while religion will give community meaning and direction, it is
for the sake of defining purpose and not simply to satisfy the human
need for community that derives from a common commitment to purpose.
Nor is the purpose of religion to initiate social action programs.
There was no need for social action programs when society created
religion. This need only came about with the proliferation of both
societies and religions and their consequent competitions.
Nor is the purpose of religion to model political correctness.
Whatever political correctness was important when religion was created
was already structured into community life and changed, not for the sake
of itself, but for the sake of the community’s purpose.
Social action and political correctness are symptoms of the religious
community’s belief in the same way that the religious community is a
symptom of commitment to its expressed mission. What religion does is
define for community what issues of social action and political
correctness might best serve the community’s message of cultural
transformation. In essence, rather than being the mission of religion,
social action and political correctness are the imperative arms of the
religious community serving its mission.
Here are some of the most vital of those questions which answers
create a religion’s message:
- WHO AM I? ---which is the question about the nature of
my being.
- HOW DO I KNOW WHAT I KNOW?---which is the question
about my source of authority.
- WHO OR WHAT IS IN CHARGE?---which is the question
about my ultimate value.
- WHAT IS MY PURPOSE?---which is the question about
that which informs and sustains my sense of self-worth.
- WHAT DOES MY DEATH MEAN?---which is the question
about the
boundaries of time in my existence.
The answers to these compelling questions create the core of a view
of reality. And out of this view of reality emerge values that create
individual and community conscience that give direction to living. A
religious community is a group sharing a common view of reality. It is
this view of reality that transcends differences and bonds the community
in mutual allegiance.
Now, if a religion dominates a culture, as Christianity has in
America, then its values and language will provide the foundational
meanings and directions of that culture and serve as some major part of
its conscience, depending on what political myth drives the culture’s
existence. This is the ultimate end of all effective social action and
political correctness, a consciousness raising that provokes the
acceptance of an altered view of reality that consequently alters social
behavior.
Flowing from this is the definition of the mission of religion. It is
to transform the society in which it exists into the shape of its own
view of reality and values conscience. And it does this by transforming
enough of the individuals in that society into the image of its own
answers to the compelling questions with the end result that its own
conscience prevails.
The reason why the radical religious right has been able to capture
the Republican Party and influence the nation’s destiny is because they
not only understand this mission, they are committed to it without
reservation. So, rather than railing against them for being effective we
should be offering an alternative with the same power of commitment.
Here, then, is another governing truth. No society is ever
transformed by any social action or political correctness that is only
designed to change its laws. Laws are only kept by a nation’s people if
their conscience subscribes to these laws. This is the singular most
important lesson of the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. He was not
interested in changing laws so blacks could eat with whites at dime
store lunch counters. He was interested in changing the heart of his
culture so that the mingling of blacks and whites in the same eating
establishment would be an irrelevant issue.
And his primary message was that if you want to change a culture’s
behavior in any sustainable manner, you first have to change the
culture’s heart that produces sustained behavior. In other words, you
have to change the culture’s answers to the compelling questions that
are at odds with the behavior of racial respect and acceptance. If you
do not believe this assertion then I invite you to look at the history
of the black population in our nation. Their civil rights were
constitutionally secured in the late eighteen hundreds but these rights
did not become a social reality until the late nineteen hundreds. That
is, these rights did not become a social reality until the cultural
heart was brought into accord. In brief, the constitution and the laws
of the land will not be kept except by those whose hearts believe in
their efficacy.
This means that the ultimate value of social action and political
correctness is that they raise a society’s consciousness of the need to
change its behavior. But unless society is, at the same time, offered a
message of transformation the society can use to change its heart, such
social action and political correctness will, in finality, be futile
finger in the dike activity. Such action will be required to occur over
and over and over and over and over again.
Have I implied that there is anything wrong with social action?
Absolutely not! Acting in ways that announce the need for social change
is imperative. What is wrong is holding up social action as the mission
of our religious movement. What is false is not social action but making
social action our reason for being. Social action is to engage in that
which is noble. And we all wish to participate in nobility. Yet, that
which is most noble is changing the heart of our culture so that it
reflects our beliefs and values.
So, the most profound and critical agent of human transformation
possessed by a religion is its answers to life’s compelling questions of
mystery, its view of reality. And the more committed in commonality a
religion is to this message the more powerful a tool of social change it
becomes. The opposite, of course, is equally true---the more diversified
a religion’s answers to the compelling questions, the greater is its
social impotence.
So, I say again, your mission as a religious institution is
individual and social transformation… a transformation that brings
society into greater accord with your answers to the compelling
questions of human existence. And as a community of faith it is to model
this message so that the social order can actually see its
transformative power at work.
I challenge you to commit in fullness to this mission for which
society created you. At the heart of this challenge will be overcoming
the fear that grips us Unitarian Universalists, namely, that if we hold
a common answer to anything profound we will have created a dogma and,
thus, will have become like, you know, Them.
We may adore the notion of unity in diversity, however, only social
impotence lies in this notion. If we wish the social power to transform
then we must become enamored of the notion that diversity resides in
unity. That is, unity is the singular source of both the capacity to
embrace diversity and to express social power, simultaneously. Unity is
the sine qua non of all constructive social power. And, if we wish to be
endowed with any empowerment to transform society, then we must grasp
and embody this essential truth. The key is not unity in diversity,
rather, it is diversity in unity.
Fredrick May Eliot, wise leader of our past, during a period of
identity confusion, admonished: “It is better to be misunderstood than
to be overlooked.” One definition of power is increments of attention.
Being overlooked is to be bereft of power.
A few years ago, at the National Gallery of Canada, in Ottawa, I sat
in the La Chappell Rideau Chapel and listened to the forty part Motet,
composed in 1575 by Thomas Tavis, surrounded by forty audio speakers,
eight sets of soprano, alto, tenor, baritone and base, each vocal part
and each set chanting a different part, yet, every set harmonizing with
all the other sets.
The power that captured one’s attention was not that of eight sets
devoted to a disparate cacophony of difference, rather, it was the
engaging harmony of eight varied sets devoted to a blended commonality.
Again, I assert that the power to engage and transform society is found
in a commonality that unifies difference into synergistic wholeness.
The most recent example of this power in our religious movement,
displayed itself in the nineteen thirties during that debate over the
validity of the Christian anthropomorphic god. Some in our movement
participated in this debate with reactive postures that distilled in
theological terms such as atheism, deism and agnosticism. However a
smaller group in our movement responded in a far more profound way. They
creatively lifted up Humanism as an alternative theology and in a brief
span of years this message brought about consequential social
transformation in our entire culture. This happened for two reasons. One
is that we addressed the needs of the culture with a new vision of
reality. The other is that we spoke with the social power of common
commitment, a common commitment that was not a totality but was a
majority that compelled social attention.
It is important to point out that the dominance of and commitment to
the Humanist perspective in the mid-twentieth century did not violate
our member freedom to disagree or differ or to offer other theological
perspectives. Quite the opposite was and remains true. It has always
been out of this maintained freedom to see and believe differently that
the new has arisen in our midst. Indeed, if there is hope that we might
yet create a new vision of reality that addresses today’s desperate need
for a saving paradigm it lies in this maintained posture.
I suggest that a new paradigm is seeking to emerge in our midst. For
want of a better term it might be called Spirituality. However, it has
remained ill-defined and without power to provoke social change because
we have failed to engage both its critical necessity and model its
transformative meanings.
How exciting it would be were our annual district and national
general assemblies to devote their programming to our religious reason
for being….the articulation of a message of redemption for a world bent
on self-destruction. How refreshing it would be to receive a copy of the
UU World that devoted its space to creating a new view of reality.
However, if any of these things are to actually happen then it will be
because we have decided to engage the mission for which society created
us rather than to play safely around its edges lest we inadvertently
step on a dangerous commonality.
I was walking down the crowded hall of a hotel at a General Assembly
when a woman stepped in front of me, stuck out her hand, smiled,
introduced herself, and said: “You have no reason to remember me. But
ten years ago I visited a Sunday service at your church. I was in a
major life crisis and your sermon helped me make a decision that
transformed my life. I just wanted to thank you.” And with that, she
turned and disappeared into the crowd.
Had I not been momentarily stunned by her words, I would have
suggested that she write the church I was serving at that time and thank
them because they had made that service possible. I was only their
representative in the pulpit that day. As I later pondered her words I
was, again, struck by the paradoxical nature of this business called
religion. It is both an immense heaviness and an exhilarating lightness.
It is both an awesome responsibility and a wonderful privilege----this
mission of being the spiritual guide to the culture’s heart and
conscience.
We have two options. We can remain as we are at this present moment,
an inert, socially impotent religious community that is gradually and
inevitably headed for cultural oblivion, or, we can pick up the mantel
of our mission, speak and model a message of transformation and offer
redemption to a spiritually bankrupt and degenerating society.
THAT IS THE CHALLENGE AND IT IS THE ONLY ONE WORTHY OF OUR
COMMITMENT!
The conclusion to my message is from Alice In Wonderland:
“Cheshire Puss,” Alice began….
“Would you tell me,
please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal
on where you want to get to”, said the cat.
“I don’t much care
where….” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go”, said
the cat.
AMEN
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