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What We Affirm
Danita Noland
May 27, 2001
You would think that after four years of seminary I would have a ready
to use, concise, yet understandable, answer to the question, “What does
it mean to be a Unitarian Universalist?” I usually start off with “We
are a liberal faith tradition with roots in the Protestant Reformation,”
And that usually only leads to more questions and further confusion.
“Does that mean you are Protestants? “Well, not really, historically
yes, but probably not in the sense most people understand Protestant to
mean Christian.” From here, the conversation continues with more
questions asked in an attempt to narrow the scope of religious
possibilities, and finally the question is asked, “Then what do you
believe?” This is when most Unitarian Universalists, including myself,
explain that we do not have a set creed, a statement of religious
beliefs, but we have our Principles and Purposes, a statement of values
and a way of being in the world that we agree to affirm and promote. I
usually walk away from these conversations dissatisfied, sensing the
person I spoke with still does not have a true understanding of their
initial question. “What does it mean to be a Unitarian Universalist?”
Throughout the year I have spent time with our Affirmations Class
students. In my thinking, this should be the most exciting and important
class we offer to our youth. It came as a surprise to me to discover
that out of all of the UUA produced curricula for children’s religious
education, there is no curriculum for the Affirmations, or Coming of
Age, class. Most congregations have developed a checklist of areas that
should be covered in such a class, UU identity, UU history, a study of
the particular congregation’s history and governance, and an examination
of one’s own beliefs. All of this is designed to help our youth gain a
better understanding of “What does it mean to be a Unitarian
Universalist?” I asked our youth this question early in the year, and
received the answers I expected, “It means you can believe anything you
want,” and references to our Principles and Purposes. I told them I
hoped that by the end of the year, after learning more about our history
and faith traditions, they would answer that question differently. But,
if we adults do not do a better job of articulating our understanding of
Unitarian Universalism, we cannot expect our youth to.
Our History and Heritage course for adults is similar to the
Affirmations program. People who are new to Unitarian Universalism are
encouraged to take this class before they sign the membership book for
USNH. We try to cover all the areas that are suggested for the
Affirmations class and provide groundwork for answering the same
question, “What does it mean to be a Unitarian Universalist?” Most
people who take this class are encountering our faith tradition for the
first time – statistics show that close to 90% of our membership
consists of people who come to us from another faith tradition. And
somehow they are supposed to learn everything our Affirmation students
learn over a full year in a short six hours! Granted, most of our youth
in Affirmations have had previous years of R.E. classes and the adults
in History and Heritage have probably read some of our literature and
attended our worship services, and are encouraged to do more of both as
a means of deepening their own understanding of what it means to be a
Unitarian Universalist. So these courses are not the only source of
learning opportunities. And I think it is important for all of us to
take seriously the answering of this question, long time members as well
as those contemplating membership for the first time, not just for the
purpose of being able to have a ready answer for people who have never
heard of us, but to take stock of our own faith, to remember why we have
chosen this faith tradition as our own, what called to us, what made us
want to make this religious community our home.
I have been thinking about this a lot recently. Partly because I
have been encouraging the Affirmations youth to articulate their own
beliefs and taught two sessions in the History and Heritage series
earlier this month, but also for more personal reasons. I began to sense
that I was losing sight of my own deeply held convictions about what it
means to me to be a Unitarian Universalist, getting caught up instead in
the mechanics of my work here. Next week, you and I will be
participating in a most sacred occasion. You will be ordaining me as a
Unitarian Universalist minister and acknowledging the call you extended
in January, asking me to be one of your ministers. I will be pledging
myself to this faith tradition as well as this congregation. I take
seriously both commitments and have been re-examining what it is I mean
when I say I belong to a liberal faith tradition with roots in the
Protestant Reformation and what called me to not only make this
religious community my home but the work to which my life is devoted.
As a child I attended the United Methodist Church and accepted the
teachings about God, Jesus, and salvation without ever feeling a need to
question their validity. In high school I began attending the Roman
Catholic church. I know now that I went to the Catholic Church because I
was looking for defined answers and structures in what felt like a
rather out of control world. I wanted someone to tell me what was right
and wrong and how to live my life. Again I accepted the teachings
without question and one of the teachings was that to question the
teachings demonstrated a lack of faith. It wasn’t long though before the
answers I was given there did not seem to hold up in real life. One
such experience, but not the only one, was when a close friend of mine
in high school was diagnosed with leukemia. My priest and others in the
congregation encouraged me to have faith, and if I believed enough and
prayed enough, a miracle might happen and Lori would not die. When Lori
died, I questioned my own faith and beliefs and felt betrayed by both
God and the church. Soon after, I left the Catholic Church and abandoned
my beliefs of a personal God.
It was nearly a decade later, when I was expecting my first child,
that I began attending church again. It was a Lutheran Church close to
where I lived. I would go there because I liked the soothing feel of the
quiet, reverent, traditional services. The minister, Pastor Ken, was
close to my age and we would talk about my religious disbeliefs. When I
told him I wasn’t sure if I believed in God or not and that I didn’t
accept most of the Christian creedal beliefs – such as Christianity
being the one an only true religion, Pastor Ken did not try to give me
answers or try to persuade me to accept certain beliefs. Instead, he was
the first person to suggest I learn about Unitarian Universalism. Pastor
Ken encouraged me to explore my own beliefs instead of turning to church
doctrine. I am sure he never imagined that his encouragement would have
such a profound effect on my life and that one day I would become a
Unitarian Universalist minister. Pastor Ken died of AIDS in 1991 but he
will be very present in my heart next week.
Two years later I began attending the Unitarian Universalist Church
of Midland, Texas. I attended a class there similar to our History and
Heritage series and participated in many Adult R.E. studies and
certainly felt that I understood what it means to be a Unitarian
Universalist. But as I studied our History in seminary, I began to
understand what it means to stand in a liberal faith tradition. When I
left Midland, I heavily associated Unitarian Universalism with our
Principles and Purposes, and this is not an incorrect or even a bad
thing to do. As Unitarian Universalists we agree to affirm and promote:
- The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
- Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
- Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our
congregations;
- A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
- The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our
- congregations and in society at large;
- The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
and
- Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a
part.
All of these statements reflect values and ways of being with one
another that I deeply agree with. And yes, our Principles and Purposes
are unique in that they stress behaviors over beliefs, and therefore are
very different than creedal statements that define most orthodox
religions. And, it may seem to us that most orthodox religions do not
promote the right of conscience, a peaceful world community, justice,
equity and compassion, nor do they affirm the inherent dignity and worth
of every person, the free and responsible search for truth, and the
interdependence of all life. But I would bet most people, of any faith
tradition, agree with these statements – they may not agree on the way
these values are made manifest in their daily lives. Nor do we all agree
on how to live out our Principles and Purposes. Some Unitarian
Universalists believe affirming the inherent dignity and worth of every
person should extend to protecting the life of a fetus and therefore we
should take stands against abortion. But the majority of Unitarian
Universalists feel that is a matter where the individual use of
conscience should prevail and we have passed 12 resolutions at General
Assemblies since 1961 that support women’s rights to make this choice.
By identifying with our Principles and Purposes, which are very
broad and general, I fear that we do fully represent the depth of who we
are and what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist. Recently I was
discussing the use of our Principles and Purposes with a colleague, --
yes we UU ministers actually have conversations about these things!, and
she said, “They’ve always felt like bumper sticker theology to me. Nice
but not all that useful.” What seems to be missing for me in our
Principles and Purposes, I think can be recovered by the use of the
phrase “liberal faith tradition”. Let’s look at each of these words on
their own and then pull them back together.
What does it mean to be a liberal? Jack Mendelsohn, a Unitarian
Universalist minister for over 50 years, describes liberalism as a way
of walking and acting in the world. He says, “It means celebrating and
practicing the importance of persons: their inherent freedom to think,
speak, associate, hear, read, see, and learn; not perfect freedom, but
responsible freedom, become manifest in the particulars of our lives.”
While contemporary use of the word liberal sometimes carries with it
negative connotations of unrestricted freedom it historically meant
something quite different. It was used in the early 1800’s to describe
the theological movement that birthed Unitarianism. Early liberal
theology called for the reformulation of Christianity, emphasizing the
use of reason, science, freedom, and experience while focusing on the
human goodness. And when early Unitarians like William Ellery Channing
spoke of their liberal faith, they were affirming the use of reason and
the right to examine all statements of doctrine and belief with a
critical eye and the freedom to make choices about one’s own beliefs. I
did not know that when I turned away from the orthodox teachings of
Christianity in my late teens that I was yearning to find a liberal
theology. Another interesting definition I came across for the word
liberal is this: The social fact of having a certain amount of elbow
room in society. I liked the image this produced in my mind of Unitarian
Universalists providing theological elbow room, so when we do this, and
stretch and grow, we don’t have to bump into each other. As a religious
liberal, I affirm elbow room.
What does it mean to be people of faith? Your faith is what you profess
to believe. Faith is what gives meaning to life. While our principles
and purposes encourage us to search for truth and meaning and grow
spiritually – they do not promote the next step – to actually develop a
set of beliefs that guide you in your life. Like Brad in Robert Frost’s
poem we want to understand our place among the infinities, but if we are
not careful we may spend all our time searching for the answers and in
the end still not have a faith that grounds us. The search is important,
but it has been said that Unitarian Universalists spend their time
circling the mountain and looking at all the paths – but never climb to
the top. Some may ask can we affirm the use of reason and profess to
have faith? There is theological debate over whether or not the phrase
reasoned faith is an oxymoron. Many orthodox religions call for belief
in that which is unseen or unknown, and refer to the ability to do this
as faith. Our early Unitarians and Universalists, dating back to the
1500’s certainly argued that religious beliefs could and should stand up
to the test of reason. Margaret Bowden, an English psychologist, expands
the use of reason in this way, “we’re not just talking about…
logical-mathematical-scientific problem solving, we’re talking about
human life, human beings, human worth and human values, and if we’re
not, we jolly well should be.” What matters to me about faith, is not
that your deepest held beliefs about life make sense to me and my
reasoning, or that mine make sense to you and your reasoning, but that
we each truly examine our lives and experiences and determine what it is
we believe. It is ok to have a strong faith and stand firmly on it, to
be people of faith. Heinrich Heine, a German poet, was gazing with a
friend at an old cathedral. The friend asked, “Tell me Heinrich, why
can’t people build piles like this anymore?”
Heinrch responded, “My dear friend, in those days people had
convictions. We moderns have opinions. And it takes more than opinions
to build a Gothic cathedral.” Michael Servetus and Francis David, both
put to death in the mid 1500’s for speaking their Unitarian faiths, had
very definite and deeply held beliefs. The fact that we, as liberals,
affirm our right to choose our own faith, does not mean we don’t believe
in anything or that we believe any and everything. And if we hope to
have an influence on our world and be agents of change that call for
justice, we must have convictions and not just opinions.
And tradition. I think I have spoken quite a bit today to the long
tradition of liberal faith that we stand in when we call ourselves
Unitarian Universalists. Our Principles and Purposes were first adopted
in 1985, a very recent development in our identity and maybe that is why
it seems to me that they do not capture our religious legacy. Throughout
time Unitarians and Universalists have given their lives and liberty
taking a stand for what they believed to be right and true in matters of
religious belief and social justice. While attending Starr King, the
importance of our history was made very real to me. It was the year of
the El Nino rains and it had been raining daily for two months when
Alicia Forsey, one of my professors who will be here next week for my
ordination, came to me very distraught and said she needed my help. Our
school houses a rare book collection. These books were gathered by Earl
Morse Wilbur in the early 1900’s when he traveled Europe preparing to
write the history of Unitarianism. Many of the books date back to the
Reformation and are one of two or three copies left in the world,
including the book written by Michael Servetus that led to his being
burned at the stake as a heretic. Although the books were in a special
room, they were beginning to mold because of all the rain. Along with a
couple of other students, I began carrying the books, a few at a time to
a different location in the school. Something about carrying these
books, and holding the book by Servetus in my own hands, made me realize
how precious our history is, and how easily it could be lost if we do
not work to preserve it. We must promote and affirm not only who we are
today, but all who have come before us, whose company we keep when we
proudly call ourselves Unitarian Universalists.
As an individual, it is easy for me to affirm the liberal way of
life and promote freedom, the right to make choices, and the use of
reason. It’s a little harder but still possible for me to claim my own
faith. But the challenge comes when I decide to not do these things
alone, but in community, and join with others who will also promote
freedom, the right to make their own choices and while being Unitarian
Universalists, may have a world view and faith very different than my
own. Mendelsohn provides an interesting explanation for why we join
faith communities, “ we have all the habits of a social species, more
compulsively social than any other, even bees and ants. Our nest, or
hive is language; we are held together by speech… Our great advantage
over all other social animals is that we possess the kind of brain that
permits us to change our minds. We are not obliged, as the ants are, to
follow genetic blueprints for every last detail of our behavior. Our
genes are more cryptic and ambiguous in their instructions: get along,
says our DNA, talk to each other, figure out the world, be useful, and
above all keep an eye out for affection.” When we become Unitarian
Universalists we make a decision to join a faith community which by its
definition engages in the very human endeavors of life and meaning
making. It will not always be easy to hold together such a community,
especially if we lose sight of what is at our center, our liberal faith
tradition. We will disagree at times over matters of faith, but with
enough elbow room, we can stand shoulder to shoulder and still do this.
And in celebrating and practicing the importance of persons we must
affirm our humanity and remember that we are not perfect as individuals
or as a faith community and will make mistakes. We should remember the
wisdom of the community in Robert Frost’s poem that realized if one by
one we count people out for little grievances, it won’t be long til
there will be no one to live with, For to be social is to be forgiving.
We can make a little elbow room for our humanness also so that when we
stumble we can support each other and continue on life’s journey
together.
I don’t think I have come up with a better answer to give to people
who have never heard of Unitarian Universalism so that they will
understand the richness and depth of what it means to be a Unitarian
Universalist. I will probably still begin by explaining we are a liberal
faith tradition but I think I might try to explain these three words a
little better before referring to our Principles and Purposes. And it is
these three words that I will be affirming next week when together we
enter into the acts of ordination and installation – our liberal way of
being in the world, the goal of having deep faith and convictions, and
our tradition which includes not only our history and legacy of truth
speakers and those who stood for religious freedom in the past but you
who are in this faith community today. Blessed be our days together.
Amen.
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