Although I serve as a minister to a liberal church, I must confess that there is a conservative
streak in my personality. Some may call this conservatism a sign that I am obstinate, or difficult,
or outdated, but I prefer to see it as a sign of my wisdom and good taste. For example:
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All my life I have worn black, wing-tipped shoes. Friends point out that wing-tips are
boring and dull, not the fitting apparel of a dashing liberal cleric. However, I do not wish
to give up comfort and resilience for the passing fads of shoe design.
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I have only owned two cars in my life. The first I bought in 1977 and the second in 1985.
This astounds my friends, who remind me that car manufacturers have made advances
such as anti-lock brakes and air bags. Nevertheless, I hope to drive my twelve-year-old car
for a few more years. I see no need to trade in an old friend. Not everything new is better.
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I have no credit cards. Using the slips from checks and debit cards, I faithfully record how
much our family spends on everything. I almost long for a tax audit, so I can show off my
careful record keeping.
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I wear gray or blue suits, with regimental ties. I listen to classical music, including the
wonderful sounds of Franz Schubert. For our honeymoon I took Leslie to Stonehenge to
gain a historical perspective on our relationship.
Of course my conservative streak lives in tension with liberalism, for I was raised in a liberal
religious church. My roots in the universe, my original points of contact, are out West in the city
of Phoenix. I was born forty-six years ago in an Arizona hospital. During the years I was growing
up in Phoenix, I attended the Unitarian Universalist church Sunday morning, a church much like
this church here in Bethesda. That liberal church deeply influenced me.
I recall the leadership of the many volunteer teachers in Sunday School. In second grade we
studied Bible stories. In a fourth grade we studied the beginnings of life. We studied creation
myths, we created models of cells, and we used a microscope to see the cells in leaves. I recall a
seventh grade class called the Church Across the Street. I visited the services of the Jews, the
Quakers, the Roman Catholics, the Mormons, and many others.
When I was in high school, I learned about life by participation in the youth group called Liberal
Religious Youth. Those were days of floating down the Salt and Verde Rivers outside Phoenix.
We took camping trips to places in Arizona like Mingus Mountain or Oak Creek Canyon or
Horse Thief Basin.
And I recall the splendid leadership of a judge in Superior Court, who chaired the church board
when I served as a member of the board in 1969 and 1970.
Those are good memories. In a Unitarian Universalist church I found that, in spite of my youth, in
spite of my shyness, people accepted me. Both my peers and the adults in the church encouraged
me to be myself. I felt welcome. That was a good feeling.
I learned to associate that feeling of acceptance with the word "liberalism." To be a liberal, I
learned, is to tolerate differences, to be open-minded, to value reason above revelation, and to
believe in the basic goodness of human beings.
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I learned about the importance of reason in the church school when teachers encouraged
me to base my knowledge on logic, to ask questions, and to experiment with ideas.
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I learned about the importance of free expression when the congregation gave us a Youth
Sunday every year and encouraged us to share our feelings and ideas with the congregation.
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I learned about the importance of the dignity of the individual when I received aid and
support for my stand as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam war.
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I learned about the importance of democracy serving on the church board.
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And I learned about the need to reexamine customs and laws when I heard sermons from
the pulpit examining questions of public policy.
I grew up in Arizona a liberal in the midst of a conservative community. The property of the
Unitarian Universalist church is next to Senator Barry Goldwater's home. His home, with its large
American Flag, that automatically raised and lowered every day, is on one desert hill overlooking
Phoenix, and the Unitarian Universalist church was on another hill. Being in the minority, I found
that it is not easy to pursue the goals of experimentation and innovation in a conservative
community that values custom and tradition.
In my school in the 1950s and 1960s, teachers often saw education as memorization. They
discouraged questions. When I suggested that interracial marriages were moral, they branded me
as a radical. In high school teachers never allowed me to grow my sideburns. Beards were
disruptive to the social order of the school system. They examined library books for radical
material. They told me that to oppose the Vietnam War was equivalent to being a coward or a
communist. However, in the Unitarian Universalist church I found a community where people
accepted me. I felt a sense of my own worth and importance as a religious liberal.
I suspect this is also the case for many of you. I hope that here you have found a community of
people who accept you for who you are.
I have, however, noted certain dangers in my liberal philosophy of life. The longer I am involved
in our Unitarian Universalist religious movement, the more conscious I become of the limitations
of a liberal religious identity.
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I have noticed that my liberal idealism and optimism about human beings can lead to an
unrealistic view of life. People are not always good.
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I have observed that my liberal emphasis on reason can result in an abstract, intellectual
view of life, to the neglect of both the practical and the emotional elements of life.
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I have seen my liberal emphasis on the full development of the individual lead to loss of
community.
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I have found that my liberal willingness to encourage change can result in a general
contempt for the past and a disturbing sense of rootlessness.
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I have noted that my liberal concern for freedom of expression can lead to an abundance
of vague, grand rhetoric, with little substance behind the words.
Furthermore, I have observed that too often a liberal identity can be preoccupied with my
differences from others. I can say that as a religious liberal I am against injustice, against racism,
against fundamentalism, and against dogmatism. And it is true. I am against these things.
However, without any positive assertion of what I am, this negative identity can lead to a spiritual
emptiness. Lacking a positive identity, I can miss the depth and fulfillment that I seek when I
participate in a religious community.
The more I have become conscious of the limitations of a liberal religious identity, the more I
have become aware of another element of my person. I have become aware of a need for custom
and tradition in my life. I need order and stability in my life. Liberalism suggests that I can best
meet this need for order by using reason. Conservatism suggests that I can best meet this need for
order through respect for tradition. I am convinced that I need both. I need innovation and
custom, reason and tradition.
I can greatly enhance my participation in this religious movement if I attend to my heritage. I learn
by studying the Bible. I learn by understanding the philosophy and the theology of the past. I
grow through an appreciation of the social and intellectual history of our religious tradition.
And, equally important, I can gain a great deal by attending to the heritage of my family, my
church and the community in which I grew up. My roots in Unitarian Universalism, the traditions
I grew up with, have given a foundation to my life. The experiences I had in the church school, in
the youth group, and in the Sunday morning services, will stay with me all my life. They have not
totally determined who I am, but they are important.
I suspect that it is much the same with you. All of us have personal roots--our family, the
religious group we were a part of as children, the school we attended, the communities we grew
up in--all of these things are highly significant elements in our existence. We pay a price when we
neglect them. When we start on a trip, we need to take some baggage with us or else when we get
where we are going we will be too light to land.
Of course it is true that, like liberalism, conservatism has limits.
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The desire for continuity can lead to a rigid support of the status quo and the repetition of
inequalities from generation to generation.
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The reverence for the past can lead to a fear of any kind of change.
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The emphasis on the concrete and the pragmatic in conservative thinking can lead to a
closed-minded authoritarianism.
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And the recognition of human limitations can lead to a pessimistic distrust of people and
to a low regard for human potential.
However, in spite of the limitations of the conservative approach to life, I believe it is profoundly
important. We continually have many people moving into our church from other religious
backgrounds. Surveys suggest that about 90% of Unitarian Universalists are "come-outers," that
is we have come from other religious backgrounds. Since our denomination has not grown in
membership in a significant way, many are also leaving us. For some, Unitarian Universalism is a
stopping off place but not a final destination. Whether people mature as they pass our way is hard
to say.
This mobile, transient nature of our congregations makes it particularly difficult for us to develop
a sense of our religious heritage, our customs and traditions. However, I believe I can improve the
odds that this religious community will be a fulfilling one if we attend not only to the liberal
dimension of our person, but also to our conservative dimension.
The strongest argument I know for the value of conservatism in life is the example of the Amish.
Having worked on farms as an apple picker in my youth, I greatly admire much in the conservative life of the Amish families. Gene Logsdon writes:
. . . Amish religion continuously challenges the merits of technological change, not only financially
but spiritually. Change is viewed with suspicion, not welcomed with the Pavlovian adoration of
mainstream farmers. . . . The use of electricity offers a good example. Most Amish sects do not
reject electricity anymore, but only electricity brought directly from the outer world into the
home, where it may become an "umbilical cord to worldly distractions and unnecessary gadgets."
Home-generated electricity, from wind, sun, or diesel motor, is generally accepted for use in the
barn and workshop. . . . The Amish raised recycling to a high art long before that word came into
modern parlance. . . . [and] on every Amish farm there are two houses. Retired grandparents live
in one of them, able to carry on productive lives on the farm to the degree that they are physically
able. . . (1)
The Amish represent conservatism at its best, as they adhere to the old and tried, and abstain from
the new and untried.
However, in some of their practices the Amish also illustrate the problems of conservatism. For
example, if an Amish marries an outsider, the relatives and friends will hold a funeral service and
never speak again to the person who has married outside the community. The practice of
shunning shows the limits of conservatism.
I think we need a balance. As a liberal I believe I should re-examine customs and laws in light of
new experiences and changing conditions. I use reason, logic and scientific methods to understand life. I value democracy as the proper form of social organization. And I value the right of
free expression in worship, writing, and speech.
However, simultaneously, I try to recognize the limits of reason. I remind myself that tradition
and custom can give an essential discipline and direction to my life. Although I believe in
innovation, I also believe in the order and stability of tradition.
Throughout our lives both the excitement of innovation and the security of tradition will attract
us. Each of us resolves the differences between liberalism and conservatism in our own way,
although we never finally settle it. May we each weave a path between them, finding ways that
will enrich our lives and the lives of others.
CLOSING WORDS
The nature that we human beings contain within us is not a harmonious unified set of characteristics. Instead we are an intricate balance of contradictions and conflicts, needs, impulses, wants,
wishes, and aims. Each of us has dimensions that are active, others that are passive. Each of us is
somewhat gentle and also fierce, timid and aggressive, courageous and fearful, loving of life but
afraid to live, having within ourselves the potential for both change and habit, for both liberty and
order.
John Alexie Crane
