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What Really Happens When People of Faith Get Together
A Sermon Given
by the Reverend Roberta Finkelstein
on August 13, 2000
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
Reading
This reading comes from the introduction to Don Harrington's meditation manual, "Outstretched
Wings
of the Spirit: On Being Intelligently and Devotedly Religious."
The primary purpose of churches is to help people become intelligently and devotedly religious,
to be so
convinced of the truth and rightness of a particular way of life as to be compelled to place oneself
under Its
command, to live with It and for It, to dedicate to It all that one has, all that one is, all that one
may become.
Such a total dedication of oneself is obviously dangerous. One may give oneself to a way that is
evil,
indifferent, small, inadequate, idolatrous, irrational. Hitler gave himself totally to a cause which was
initially
partial and which became increasingly demonic, especially because of his total dedication, which he
believed
had the blessing of divine Providence. The power of religious dedication is great, the danger equally so.
This is why reason and intelligence are important for religious devotion. Faith is too dangerous
and too
important to be accepted on anyone's say-so, whatever the source of authority. All of us must be
convinced that
our faith is sound, true, reasonable, just, and that rightness is ascertainable by some external,
objective criteria,
evidence drawn from our own and shared human experience. Faith may venture beyond the limits of reason
and
hard, scientifically validated evidence; it should never be irrational or anti-science.
Henry Nelson Wieman introduced me to the concepts of process theology - God in and as the
universal
process. At a moment when my intelligence and scientific world-view had led me to reject both the idea
of God
and most traditional theological concepts, Wieman's naturalistic philosophy and theological explications
restored them to me as a foundation for a vital, living faith, capable of undergirding a lifetime of
urban ministry.
It is my hope that Wieman may be able to help others as he did me in . . . striving to become
intelligently and
devotedly religious.
Sermon
This is the third in a series of sermons on the theology of membership in the liberal church.
These
sermons are based on the research and writing I am doing for the UUA Commission on Appraisal, which next
June at General Assembly will be offering a published report on "The Meanings of Membership." I
have talked
earlier this spring about relational theologies - specifically Mary Hunt's theology of friendship - and
about
liberation theologies. Today I want to introduce you to process theology.
But before I can talk about process theology, I have to talk about people. "To be human," it
says in the
Unitarian Universalist Pocket Guide, "is to be religious. To be religious is to make
connections. To lead a
meaningful life among the many competing forces of the twenty-first century, each of us needs support in
making meaningful re-connections to the best in our global heritage, the best in others, and the best in
ourselves."
Our UUA President John Buehrens wrote those words, and they reflect some of the most basic
assumptions that the Commission is working with as we go about this study of the meanings of membership.
Human beings are incurably religious and we are impelled to our religiousness
by several things. One is our
desire to find meaning in our lives. Most of us don't relish leading lives of quiet desperation. Rather,
we want
to make sense out of our experiences. Two is the need to make connections on deep levels - with other
people,
with a community, and with the ground of all being. Three is a desire for growth and change - for
transformation.
Now, those things are generalizations about all people. Our own UU theologian James Luther Adams
suggests
that the word religion itself refers to " . . . concern with the inescapable issues regarding the meaning
and
fulfillment of life . . . " But there are some very particular assumptions that we are making about the
particular
people who make a commitment to Unitarian Universalism. We are folks who are looking for a religious
experience that gives primacy to human reason, human will, and human intuition. We are people who
consider
critical reflection on individual experience to be the a primary source of religious authority. We are
intentionally seeking a religious community that is committed to an atmosphere of intellectual and
spiritual
freedom, a deep and wide tolerance of other people's views, and a rich diversity of experiences and
opinions.
And so we bring our particular individual experiences, thoughts, feelings, and desires to
church, hoping
for a chance to reflect on them in the company of sympathetic others. We hope to make meaning out of
those
life experiences, to connect with others who are also about this meaning-making business. Ideally, we
expect to
be transformed by our participation in the liberal religious life.
So what does theology have to do with all of that? Well, theology is, simply put, a way of
understanding
what is of greatest - no - of ultimate importance to us. It is a way of articulating our ethical
principles, it is what
underlies the way we do worship, it is the words we put to the deepest yearnings of our souls. It is the
creative
use of reason applied to questions of ultimate meaning. Theology is our commentary, our discourse, on
what
our human experiences have taught us about life and love. James Luther Adams says it this way. "When
the
temperature of a person's mind or spirit rises to defend something to the very last ditch, then generally
that
person's sacred devotion is at stake." Theology is an attempt to talk about our sacred devotions.
Now I can introduce you briefly to a way of thinking theologically - through the work of Henry
Nelson
Wieman and his concept of creative interchange. Wieman was a philosopher of religion, an empirical
theologian, and a significant contributor to liberal religious thinking in the late 20th
century. Although he was
born into the Presbyterian church, he made his way to us, and lived the last decades of his life in
Unitarian
Universalism. He died in 1975.
Wieman's work gives us a way to elevate human relationships to the level of ultimate worth and
meaning - filling out the real meaning of that first Principle, about the inherent worth and dignity of
every
person. It is based on the assumption that in some way, people encounter the divine in human
relationships.
Not all relationships; but in intentional, nurturing relationships. You can characterize Wieman as
humanistic,
not in the sense of rejecting the existence of God, but in the Renaissance sense of asserting the
centrality of
human experience. So people enter into certain profoundly important relationships, and something
happens!
That something - creative interchange - is the energy that is created when people get together, learn
from each
other, stimulate and challenge each other, spark off each other. Creative interchange is transformative
-
Wieman believes that people are changed by their relationships. It is generative in that the changes
wrought by
positive relationships make us more caring, more nurturing. Ultimately, the goal of this process is to
become
more effective in bringing about just and caring communities. If our congregations can be places where
creative
interchange happens consistently among the membership, then we could become a world-changing religious
movement!
Wieman proposes a four step process through which creative interchange happens. Keep in mind
that
this process is not linear, but cyclical and circular. Step one is called emergent perspectives. We
reflect on our
own life experiences - not in isolation. but in a group setting. Each person then communicates some of
what
they have concluded from their reflections to others. When we talk to each other about our lives - what
has
happened, what has been important, what has been felt most deeply - that is when we learn to attach
meaning to
experience. Ideally, this could be happening every Sunday morning - in worship, in coffee hour, in
adult
education settings.
Once this starts to happen, we come to the second step - progressive integration. In this step,
the
exchange of meanings from step one leads each person to enrich their own thoughts and feelings with the
meanings of others. This step, unlike the first, is more likely to happen in solitude. Maybe it happens
in the car
on the way home from church, or from the board meeting. Yes, I believe that even board meetings are
places of
creative interchange!
The third step is called expanding appreciation. What happens here is that the shared values
that we
each took home from church - or wherever - have been integrated into our way of thinking, responding,
living,
and as a result our world expands - the range of experiences which we understand and analyze is larger.
Wieman describes it as " . . . a range and variety of events, a richness of quality, and a reach of
ideal possibility
which were not there prior to this transformation . . . "
The primary subject for reflection is our own life, but the process requires the presence and
encouragement of other people. You see, it is the group that allows each person to become more than any
of us
could have been while struggling alone. And that leads us to the final step in the creative interchange
- growing
community. "If you and I have expanded our appreciable worlds as individuals"
he says, "then the relations we
have with our respective communities will also prove creatively transforming, such that they will grow in
healthy, non-competitive ways." This is the action step and it points the way towards justice, care of
others, and
deepening of relational bonds.
The great value in Wieman's work is that it gives us a way to make our human relationships into
something that is worthy of our ultimate commitment. In thinking about a theology of membership, it is
essential to be able to identify the very real human-to-human relationships as the basic experience of
belonging
to a church. If we can use language that elevates these relationships and experiences to the level of
the holy -
that which is of ultimate worth - we can begin to affirm membership in a Unitarian Universalist
congregation as
an experience that has deep and enduring value.
cluuc@his.com
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